A visual representation of dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Yuriko Nakao | Getty Images
LONDON – Dogecoin is growing after billionaire Elon Musk and several celebrities appeared to support the cryptocurrency on Twitter.
According to CoinMarketCap data, the meme-inspired listing met 65% in 24 hours up to a record high of $ 0.083745 at 5:30 pm ET on Sunday. As of 5 a.m. Monday afternoon, the dogecoin was up 25% at a price of $ 0.07415.
Dogecoin’s stellar performance has increased its market value to more than $ 9.5 billion (reaching a high of $ 10.7 billion on Sunday), making it the 10th digital currency in the ranking. CoinMarketCap.
On Sunday, at its highest intraday, dogecoin trading volume had reached $ 13.5 billion in the last 24 hours.
Dogecoin was created in 2013 and is based on the popular “meme” doge which then portrays a Shiba Inu dog next to multicolored text with Comic Sans lettering. The cryptocurrency initially started out as a joke, but has since gained a following.
Retail investors have been raising the price of dogecoin recently, taking the lead in tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk has tweeted about dogecoin several times over the years.
Most recently, he published an image of a fictional magazine “Dogue”, a play with the popular fashion title “Vogue”, which caused an 800% increase in the price of the dogecoin.
Musk later backed Bitcoin, saying it is “on the verge of gaining widespread acceptance” in finance. But he added that he does not have a “strong opinion” about other virtual currencies and that his tweets about dogecoin should be taken as jokes.
“But fate loves irony,” Musk recently told the Clubhouse social audio app. “The most entertaining and most ironic result would be for dogecoin to become the currency of the Earth in the future.”
Musk has seen several tweets about dogecoin. Just two days after saying he planned to take a break on Twitter “for a while,” Musk returned, posting dogecoin memes and calling the symbol “people’s cryptography.”
He has been accompanied by people from Snoop Dogg and Kiss singer Gene Simmons in posting tweets supporting dogecoin. Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., tweeted Musk with a parody of one of his albums. The words on the album cover are replaced with “Snoop Doge” while the doge image covers Broadus’ face.
Meanwhile, Gene Simmons – whose real name is Gene Klein – has actively promoted dogecoin to his followers, tweeting about popular slang phrases in cryptocurrencies like “HODL” and “on the moon.” Klein says he made a “six-figure” investment in dogecoin and also owns other cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin.
The episode is reminiscent of the crypto fashion of late 2017, when the price of Bitcoin soared to nearly $ 20,000 before falling to nearly $ 3,000 the following year. Several celebrities had advertised cryptography in 2017, and some supported a controversial form of crowdfunding known as the “initial coin offering”.
The resurgence of Dogecoin in recent weeks has also been due to the enthusiasm of a Reddit group called SatoshiStreetBets. Like the WallStreetBets subreddit, which helped fuel GameStop’s recent merger, SatoshiStreetBets aims to raise cryptocurrency prices.