A visual representation of Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Yuriko Nakao | Getty Images
LONDON – Dogecoin is rising after billionaire Elon Musk and a number of celebrities endorsed cryptocurrency on Twitter.
The meme-inspired token rose 65% in 24 hours to a record high of $ 0.083745 on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. ET, according to CoinMarketCap. On Monday at 5 a.m. ET, Dogecoin rose 25% at a price of $ 0.07415.
Dogecoin’s outstanding run has increased its market value to over $ 9.5 billion – it briefly peaked at $ 10.7 billion on Sunday – making it the number 10 digital coin in CoinMarketCap’s ranking.
At its intraday peak on Sunday, Dogecoin trading volume had reached around $ 13.5 billion in the past 24 hours.
Dogecoin was created in 2013 and is based on the “Doge” meme, popular at the time, which depicts a Shiba Inu dog alongside multi-colored text in Comic Sans. The cryptocurrency was originally started as a hoax, but has since gained a following.
Retail investors recently increased the price of Dogecoin based on tweets from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. Musk has tweeted about Dogecoin several times over the years.
More recently, he published an image of a fictional “Dogue” magazine – a piece about the popular fashion title “Vogue” – that caused the price of Dogecoin to increase by 800%.
Musk then threw his support behind Bitcoin, saying it was “on the verge of widespread adoption” in the financial sector. But he added that he doesn’t have a “strong opinion” about other virtual currencies and that his tweets about Dogecoin should be viewed as jokes.
“But fate loves irony,” Musk said recently on the Clubhouse social audio app. “The most entertaining and ironic result would be that Dogecoin will become the currency of the earth in the future.”
Musk has made several tweets about Dogecoin. Just two days after saying he planned to take a break from Twitter “for a while,” Musk returned, posted Dogecoin memes, and called the token “the people’s crypto.”
He was joined by Snoop Dogg and Kiss singer Gene Simmons to post tweets in support of Dogecoin. Snoop Dogg, real name Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., tweeted on Musk with a parody of one of his albums. The words on the album cover are replaced with “Snoop Doge” while the Doge picture covers Broadus’ face.
Meanwhile, Gene Simmons – whose real name is Gene Klein – has been actively promoting Dogecoin to his followers, tweeting popular slang phrases in crypto like “HODL” and “to the moon”. Klein says he made a “six-figure” investment in Dogecoin and owns other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.
The episode is reminiscent of the crypto craze of late 2017, when the price of Bitcoin rose to nearly $ 20,000 before dropping to $ 3,000 the following year. Several celebrities had hyped crypto in 2017, with some advocating a controversial form of crowdfunding known as the “first coin offering”.
Dogecoin’s resurgence in recent weeks is also due to the buzz of a Reddit group called SatoshiStreetBets. Like the WallStreetBets subreddit that fueled the recent GameStop rally, SatoshiStreetBets aims to raise the prices of cryptocurrencies.
