First, social media forums brought the Gamestop share a massive price increase, now they are fueling a crypto currency with dog mascots.
It all started with a funny dog photo. A meme is an image-based joke that can spread rapidly on the Internet, but sometimes disappears again quickly. The meme, known under the name Doge, is one of the longest lasting.
It has been known since around 2013 : The photo of a specimen of the Japanese dog breed Shiba Inu can always be seen on which, at least in the past, often colorful and grammatically incorrect sayings in the Comic Sans font were to be read. What does that mean? Sometimes half-sarcastic admiration, sometimes identification with a cute animal, and, as is so often the case with Internet phenomena, the meaning can change quickly.
Soon the doge dog also became the trademark and namesake of its own crypto currency. The price of a Dogecoin was very low for a long time. In January 2018 it briefly exceeded the one US cent mark, but did not reach it again for a long time. Until now. Just a few days ago, Dogecoin was around 0.8 US cents. The course has recently been surprisingly stable.
The day before yesterday it began to rise rapidly, reaching values above 50 US cents. It’s about a 100-fold increase in one month. Cryptocurrencies are known for their extreme price swings, but Dogecoin breaks the standard. For comparison: Bitcoin is growing massively, but the 33 percent increase in the past four weeks is only a fraction of the Dogecoin hype . However, the market capitalization of the dog coin is only a good six billion dollars, which is less than a hundredth of that of Bitcoin.
[su_box title=”TWEET”]— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 28, 2021
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As with the Gamestop share, agreements on social networks like Reddit are behind the increase . In line with the Forum WallStreetBets , is the Reddit group at dogecoin SatoshiStreetBets, Satoshi is reportedly the name of the mysterious Bitcoin inventor.
And US investor Elon Musk also played a role in Dogecoin. Most recently, he posted a photo of a fictional dog fashion magazine called Dogue on his Twitter profile, an allusion to “Vogue”. After Musk had already fueled the rush for Gamestop shares, many Dogecoin enthusiasts did not doubt that the Tesla boss also wanted to give the dog cryptocurrency his blessing.