Anyone who has ever looked into what crypto is all about knows exactly what Bitcoin and Ethereum are, but dogecoin was just one of many alt coins that were pretty much anonymous.
Now, though, after Elon Musk got behind the project with his many tweets pushing for support, Dogecoin is in prime position to be one of the main players in the crypto space for many years to come.
Just a Bit of fun
When software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer built a payment system to make fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies, they never imagined in their wildest dreams that Dogecoin would ever be worth anything.
Indeed, after eight years it was only worth slightly less than $0.01 with no real prospects to upset the order; and then Elon Musk poked his nose in.
Quickly, the price rocketed to more than a 20,000% year-to-date increase, making it the fifth most valuable coin on the market. Dogecoin was also the most talked about cryptocurrency in the news helping to keep momentum building.
As ever, it wasn’t all plain sailing and with a lot of social media coverage the price was pushed and pulled around a bit before settling at $0.25. When appearing on TV show Saturday Night Live in May, Musk jokingly called Dogecoin a “hustle”, sending the price into freefall. Since that day the value has dropped by more than 65% but the future is still looking bright.
Also, recently, Musk caused Bitcoin to crash after criticising the obscene energy usage by miners, and also retreating on his promise to accept the leading coin as payment for Tesla products. Dogecoin, on the other hand, is a coin Musk wants to support.
A couple of days ago The South African-born American tweeted about Baby Doge, another meme cryptocurrency, sending the price up 5% instantly. Apparently, it isn’t even related to Dogecoin at all. Marketwatch pointed out that he might have been parodying a kid’s song called Baby Shark and crypto investors got the wrong end of the stick.
Dogecoin proper also rose 7% after this tweet featuring a scene from The Godfather.
As if this whole story can’t get any stranger, a YouTuber sent a Dogecoin physical coin up to space on a weather balloon to celebrate Elon Musk’s 50th birthday last week. He had hoped to convince Musk to send it up on one of his SpaceX rockets but didn’t receive any response from him.
