Gamestop gamers on the retreat: Dogecoin course crashes

Sunday 31st January 2021

Gamestop gamers on the retreat
Dogecoin course crashes

From Jan Gänger

First Gamestop, then Dogecoin. Traders meet on social media forums to drive prices higher. In the case of digital currency, however, after impressive profits, it is falling steeply.

Leaders of the Gamestop attack on hedge funds have found a new target to drive the price up with a flash mob – Dogecoin. After the rate of the digital currency initially exploded, it is now rushing into the depths.

A Dogecoin currently costs less than 0.3 US cents and is therefore only worth about half as much as it was on Friday when it was driven to a record high. Anyone who was there at the beginning of the soaring can still cope with the – virtual – losses, after all, the price had increased tenfold at times at the end of the week – among other things because Tesla founder Elon Musk in a tweet shared the cover of a similar-sounding dog magazine ("Douge").

Explanation: The logo of Doge shows a dog of the Japanese breed Shiba. The name of the digital currency is a modification of the English word "dog" for dog. The whole thing is based on a well-known meme. The digital currency was originally intended as a bitcoin parody.

Meanwhile, Reddit and Twitter are busy getting down to business: To stop the price drop, owners of Dogecoins are being asked in numerous posts not to sell them. "To those who claim that the hype is over: We have demonstrated in the past three to four days that our joint effort is effective. As soon as we no longer stick together, we fail," says Reddit as an example. "If you keep (your Dogecoins), you are a big dog," tweeted a user named "Dogecoin Rise" to his almost 198,000 followers. "Panic sellers are little puppies."

Musk answers

At Gamestop, the Reddit group Wallstreetbets managed to get the share running. They achieved this primarily by stylizing the procedure as a campaign against hedge funds. With resounding success: the course raced to dizzying heights. And hedge funds that had bet on falling prices suffered immense losses.

Some of the initiators have their fingers in the game at Dogecoin – for example an influential Wallstreetbets member who calls himself WSBChairman and is considered one of the leaders. He asked – and acted completely harmless – in a tweet whether the Dogecoin rate had ever reached a dollar. The question is easy to answer: No.

At the latest when Musk liked the tweet, some of his followers (44.5 million) and followers of WSBChairman (around 920,000) may have taken it as a blow to attack in order to beat the course further up. They stormed off cheerfully. At the moment, however, it looks as if some have already started a strategic retreat.