Even though the rally has faded since then, you would still be up about 4,500% at Monday’s prices.
Snowballing interest on social media, widespread Dogecoin memes, the GameStop mania in January, two rounds of stimulus checks, and endorsements by celebrities like Tesla CEO Elon Musk were all factors.
Dogecoin may be a bubble — and indeed, the coin has already lost more than 40% of its value from its peak just a week ago.
Bitcoin is based on a 2008 white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous person or group of people.
Bitcoin’s artificial scarcity is a core component of the bull thesis behind the currency, as Bitcoin backers argue that the limit makes it a good hedge on inflation, or even a digital version of gold.
It takes only one minute to confirm transactions with Dogecoin, while Bitcoin takes 10 minutes, and the transaction fees to use Dogecoin are much lower than those for Bitcoin.
In recent weeks, about half of Dogecoin tokens have changed hands every day, indicating that the token is highly speculative.
Apple’s shares trade on average just about twice a year, showing that its ownership is made up largely of buy-and-hold, long-term investors.
Taking gold as a proxy, one of the easiest ways to buy and sell gold is through the ETF SPDR Gold Shares, but shares of the ETF change hands only about six times a year — and the ETF accounts for only a small fraction of the roughly $9 trillion worth of gold in the world, most of which is never traded.
Could that change in the digital era? Absolutely.
Bitcoin may eventually gain credence as a digital alternative to gold, but its trading volume, volatility, and the memes show that it is much more similar to Dogecoin at the moment.