Dogecoin — a digital coin based on a Shiba Inu meme that started as a joke in 2013, when the cryptocurrency boom was in its infancy — is off the leash and rampaging on Wall Street.
Crypto firm Coinbase lists Dogecoin with a market cap of $78 billion, based on the multiplication of price and created coins — almost double that of Ford ($45.2 billion) and Twitter ($42.1 billion), CNBC reported Wednesday.
Its value has soared ahead of chief backer and self-appointed ”Dogefather” Elon Musk’s “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig, the Daily Mail reported.
CNBC noted the potential for the Tesla CEO to talk about the currency on national television could be driving more demand.
Though started as a gag, Dogecoin now has the attention of billionaires like Musk and Mark Cuban and easy access through free-trading app Robinhood, CNBC reported.
”I worry that, once the enthusiasm rolls out, there’s no developers on it, there’s no institutions coming in. But it’s got this moniker of the people’s coin right now,” Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz told CNBC’s ”Squawk Box” show.
”When you think about the whole theory of what this crypto revolution is, there’s something pure about what Dogecoin’s done,” adding, ”it’s a little bit of a middle finger to the system.”
Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, told MarketWatch the dogecoin bubble should have ”popped by now, but institutional interest is trying to take advantage of this momentum and that could support another push higher.”
”Dogecoin is surging because many cryptocurrency traders do not want to miss out on any buzz that stems from Elon Musk’s hosting of ‘Saturday Night Live.”’
”What we’re seeing right now is the definition of speculative excess,” IG analyst Kyle Rodda, who likened it to the tech-bubble mania of two decades ago, told Marketwatch.
”There’s money being thrown at anything in the crypto space,” he said.
Dogecoin was trading at about 62 cents by Wednesday afternoon; it broke above 50 cents a share for the first time Tuesday, CNBC reported.
That means an investor who paid in $1,000 on January 1 would now have around $120,000, according to the Daily Mail.
This year alone it has soared over 14,000%, from $0.00468 on December 31, taking it past more widely used cryptocurrencies such as the Tether stablecoin and XRP to become the fourth-largest by market capitalization, the Daily Mail reported.
Source: Newmax
