A visual representation of Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Yuriko Nakao | Getty Images
LONDON – Dogecoin rises after billionaire Elon Musk and other 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 reached US $ 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, which was popular at the time, which, in addition to multicolored text in comic-sans script, depicts a Shiba-Inu dog. The cryptocurrency was originally started as a joke but has gained a following.
Retail investors have recently increased the price of Dogecoin and turned to Musk. Tesla’s CEO has tweeted about Dogecoin several times over the years.
More recently, he published a picture of a fictional “Dogue” magazine – a piece with the 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. In an SEC filing filed on Monday, Tesla announced it had bought $ 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and was accepting the cryptocurrency to pay for its products.
In his previous statement in support of Bitcoin, Musk, he did not have a “strong opinion” about other virtual currencies and that his tweets about Dogecoin were intended 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 recently 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 the rapper’s face.
Simmons – real name Gene Klein – has actively promoted Dogecoin to his followers and tweeted popular slang phrases in crypto like “HODL” and “to the moon”. The rocker said he made a “six-figure” investment in Dogecoin and owned 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 group that fueled the recent GameStop rally, SatoshiStreetBets is aiming to increase the prices of cryptocurrencies.
