Dogecoin (DOGE) is the original memecoin that helped propel memecoins an as an entire segment of the crypto markets. Despite its modest beginnings as a joke between two software engineers, Dogecoin has become a stalwart of the cryptocurrency space, consistently achieving a ranking in the top ten tokens by market cap.
Dogecoin is an inflationary currency, and new DOGE coins are3 issued with no mechanism for reducing or limiting supply. Unlike Bitcoin, where there will only ever be a maximum of 21 million BTC, there is also no upper limit on the amount of DOGE that can be in circulation at any one time.
New Dogecoins are created through the Dogecoin Proof of Work (PoW) consensus, which rewards miners with 10,000 DOGE for each mined block. At a rate of approximately one block per minute, this equates to 14.4 million new DOGE entering circulation each day.
As a memecoin, DOGE doesn’t have a great deal of utility, despite efforts by the Dogecoin community to promote it as a medium of exchange. Therefore, trading volumes and price movements are predominantly driven by popularity-based demand.
Dogecoin (DOGE) Price Charts
The price of DOGE has proven to be notoriously volatile and unpredictable over the years, even by the standards of the cryptocurrency markets. Since any fundamental factors that may affect the price, such as tokenomics or utility, haven’t changed significantly over time, most of this volatility has been driven by external factors related to Dogecoin’s popularity and public profile (see below.)
Similarly, while technical analysis of past DOGE price trends may be of some value, many of the wild price swings have occurred based on unpredictable events such as celebrity endorsements or becoming the inadvertent target of meme stock traders.
DOGE Price and its History
Dogecoin’s price has undergone some interesting movements reflecting its popularity over the years. For example, it gained significant traction among the cryptocurrency community when it launched in late 2013, achieving a price of $0.0013 (and a market cap above $60 million) within only a few months of launching. At that time, this success put it in the top five cryptocurrencies ranked by market cap.
Over subsequent years, Dogecoin slipped further down the cryptocurrency ranking tables as its market cap failed to compete with the many newer projects that emerged during the ICO boom of 2016 and 2017.
During this time, DOGE price charts showed similar patterns to those of the rest of the cryptocurrency markets led by Bitcoin. DOGE reached a new all-time high of $0.015 in January 2018, shortly after Bitcoin posted its then-high price of $20,000. However, it came at a time when most of the market was reaching new highs, so DOGE’s performance failed to stand out from the pack.
DOGE prices had their best moment in history during the 2021 bull market, when the project became caught up in the Wall Street Bets meme stock frenzy. Traders on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit had identified that Wall Street hedge funds were taking out short positions against Game Stop, and decided to trade long against them, pumping Game Stop stock prices to all-time highs.
After Robinhood – the main platform used by the traders – shut down Game Stop trading, the traders began expanding their efforts to other assets. Following several supportive interventions by Elon Musk, DOGE prices continued to pump at an even faster rate than the broader crypto markets, finally reaching an all-time high of $0.74 in May 2021.
Since then, although the project has failed to recapture the same price high, Dogecoin has consistently remained one of the top-ranking cryptocurrencies. It’s also spawned a slew of copycats, including many other dog-themed cryptocurrencies such as Shiba Inu (SHIB), dogwifhat (WIF), and Floki (FLOKI), among others.
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Conclusion
- Dogecoin is the first-ever memecoin that has become one of the top-ranking cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
- Following initial success, DOGE was overtaken by other projects until 2021, when it became part of the meme stock-buying craze.
- After an all-time price high of $0.74 in May 2021, DOGE continues to post steady performance comparable with the rest of the market.