We all know that the world of cryptocurrencies has been increasing its popularity exponentially since the current pandemic began, moreover in this year 2021, where Bitcoin has become relevant again. A large number of people without knowledge of the subject, have turned their sight and interest into the wonderful universe of cryptocurrencies.
Today, I want to talk with you about the famous, iconic, fun and maybe cute Dogecoin. The crypto that started as a joke by Billy Markus, a software engineer from IBM. However, it goes further than that! Let’s delve ourselves into it a bit more.
Between the last months of 2020 and the initial months of 2021, Dogecoin increased its value really fast, becoming, to everyone's surprise, the tenth cryptocurrency at that time by temporarily entering the top ten of cryptos. Surprisingly, it managed to reach a total capitalization of more than 10 billion dollars.
What is the origin of this cute cryptocurrency?
Dogecoin, a.k.a. Doge, is a cryptocurrency that takes its name after the image Japanese dog breed, the Shiba Inu, more specific, from a meme of this dog that became popular years ago in a lot of places of the internet.
Behind its creation in 2013, we found the aforementioned programmer Billy Markus, along with Jackson (also a programmer). They wanted to create a cryptocurrency that would be enjoyed by a large number of people from different backgrounds. Doge had remained on the margins of the virtual currency charts, seen as a simple anecdote, due to its negligible value. However, the entry on the scene of the famous millionaire businessman owner of Tesla, Elon Musk, the panorama has changed radically for our little Dogecoin.
Due to this situations, the already popular doge has dramatically increased its maximum value by more than 1500% from the month of November 2020 to April 2021, with the attention also paid by the now famous investment forum of Wall Street Bets on Reddit, making it a usual topic of conversation in recent months, at least among the people that’s it a little more into cryptos than the average.
What has caused this unexpected rise in Dogecoin?
Dogecoin behavior graphic (last three months)
*Graphic provided by coinmarketcap
Dogecoin had behaved in a really “low profiled” way, since its creation almost 10 years ago, with very low values that usually hovered with numbers of three zeros to the left, it’s almost impossible to think that today a Dogecoin is valued at around 0.072 USD (April 2021); which means a very large percentage increase in such a short period of time.
Among the conditions that have allowed and caused Doge to skyrocket we can mention the following.
- Incidence of social networks in cryptocurrency
Undoubtedly, the great reach of social media, raises a lot of opportunities to make any topic go viral. In fact, Dogecoin works as a good example, since its value was influenced by the statements and tweets of Elon Musk, along with the Wall Street Bets community on Reddit have been the fuse that has lit the rocket for the great rise and appreciation that this currency has had in recent months.
- Reddit social network with Wall Street Bets forum
The Reddit community, which went to war against the investment funds that decided to destroy the GameStop game store network, wondered: If it was possible to increase the value of GameStop, what is stopping us to do the same with the value of Dogecoin?
The Reddit community believed it and soon there were increases in the value of the “coin” due to the significant virality and attention that this network presents.
- Advanced technology, even more optimal than Bitcoin
The Dogecoin uses Scrypt, an algorithm that has been called revolutionary since it was used. This algorithm also helps produce faster speeds, which make your transactions faster, even than Bitcoin, and is generally more accessible to novice miners.
Now, the question many people is still wondering by today…
Is it really a good decision to invest in Dogecoin?
Well, as anything related to finances (and even more for cryptos) this is a difficult question to answer, we all know that the world of cryptocurrencies is unstable and speculative for a large number of people who decide to get into trading, in this particular case, it is true that this digital currency has been very profitable for people who have bought and have managed to achieve a very high percentage return, which has certainly made the financial accounts of many traders go to the moon.
After what happened with Elon Musk and Wall Street Bets, I thought Doge would plummet down to where it was initially, however, I’m still surprised not only how it has remained stable around 0.05, but also how it went up by 25% in these last 7 days (according to coinmarketcap.com). Guess that in this world you truly never know what to expect.
I didn’t believe Doge was a good investment, I saw it just as a joke, just as its creators intended Doge to be, however, is that really what we can say today in 2021?
I want to finish this paragraph by saying something you’ve surely heard lots of times: Risk only the amount of money that you’re willing to lose.
That said, if you reached here, I want to thank you for reading what I had to share. Even though Dogecoin is a topic very recurrent these days, I haven't seen a post here on Hive that talked about it. I also want to state that I'm just someone just loves tech and cryptos! I've had no financial experiencie nor I pretend to :)
I'd like to know what anyone opinion on Doge is, feel free to make a comment!
Sources
*They're in Spanish, but you can check them here: