The price of Dogecoin (DOGE), a cryptocurrency created as a meme that uses the Shiba Inu dog breed as a theme, has surged over 500% to hit a new all-time high above $0.05. Its market capitalization is now close to $6 billion, making it the 12th biggest crypto by market cap.
The surge appears to be related to the WallStreetsBets subreddit and its battle against hedge funds over the price of GameStop’s shares. After a parody account on Twitter going by WSB Chairman asked whether DOGE had ever traded at $1, other users piled on.
The account’s large following is associated with the WallStreetBets (WSB) subreddit, and soon after hashtags pointing to Dogecoin hitting $1 soon started trending. DOGE’s price surge started shortly after Robinhood blocked retail traders from buying up more GME shares. The SatoshiStreetBets subreddit is believed to be contributing.
Available data shows Dogecoin broke out of a long downtrend and started surging at about $0.0077. From there, it went up over 570% to now trade at a new all-time high of $0.052. While the cryptocurrency’s price is low, it’s worth pointing out it has a supply of 128.1 billion DOGE.
The campaign to push Dogecoin over the $1 mark did not just see its price hit a new record. DOGE has now become the cryptocurrency with the most tweets over a 24-hour period, breaking previous records set by Bitcoin on January 2, 2012, and on December 22,2 017. These dates coincide with BTC’s highs near $42,000 in January and near $20,000 in December 2017.
Dogecoin’s price rise was so aggressive that its trading volume briefly overtook that of Bitcoin and Ethereum on leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance. As crypto analyst Joseph Young points out, its volume was $3.4 billion.
I can't believe I'm saying this.$DOGE volume just briefly overtook Bitcoin and Ethereum on Binance.
$3.4 billion.
$3,400,000,000.
— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) January 29, 2021
DOGE has in the past seen similar pumps, including one seen after Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal and current CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, ironically promoted the meme-based cryptocurrency.
In July of last year, a viral video on TikTok from a user asking others to buy the cryptocurrency so everyone could “get rich” on the platform saw retail investors pile on the cryptocurrency again. Each was investing $25 to, at the time, buy 10,640 DOGE, in a bid to pump the cryptocurrency’s price to $1 and have over $10,000 as a result.
