Friday 29th January 2021
Wow, Elon Musk is also involved
Gamestop rebels drive Dogecoin course
By Klaus Wedekind
What do a porn actress and Elon Musk have in common? You both tweeted about Dogecoin. But that alone does not explain why the crypto currency has increased tenfold in value within 24 hours.
If investors shudder at the thought of crypto currencies, and they gasp at the gamestop gambling of the past few days, they should definitely not read any further. Because with Dogecoin, both come together. After a well-known porn actress and jack of all trades Elon Musk had already given the crypto currency a little boost at the beginning of the month, her price exploded yesterday and even increased tenfold for a short time.
Dogecoin is not a superstar among cryptocurrencies, but is well known to insiders. It was created in 2013, originally intended as a fun answer to the hype of Bitcoin & Co. That's why the name and symbol of the coin are based on a well-known meme that became extremely popular in the same year. Doge is a variation of the English word dog for dog. Doge memes show photos of a dog of the Japanese Shiba breed combined with a saying that often expresses the animal's surprise about a certain issue. Therefore, they often start with "wow".
Although intended as a parody, Dogecoin is a "real" cryptocurrency. But while Bitcoin, for example, is limited to 21 million coins and the mining of the currency by solving complex mathematical tasks requires ever greater computing efforts, Dogecoin is far less limited. The number of coins was limited to 100 billion at the beginning, before founder Jackson Palmer completely lifted the limit around a year later. But since only a certain number of Dogecoins is allowed per year, the inflation rate will decrease over the years, according to Wikipedia it will be 3.4 percent in 2025.
Not only popular in the porn industry
Dogecoin is not only fun, the crypto currency is also suitable for everyday use in a certain way. So far, it has mainly served to raise money for projects, but only recently has it made its way into the mainstream. The biggest success to date is likely to have recently been recognition as a means of payment on the porn platform Pornhub.
Even after the turn of the year, Dogecoin had received a significant boost from the industry. Porn star Angela White told her 1.3 million followers that she had been holding the crypto currency since 2014. After all, the coin then increased from around 0.4 to 1.3 cents.
But Dogecoin has an even more potent supporter, although his motives – again – are not entirely clear. Just before Christmas tweeted Elon Musk, "One word: Doge". The multi-billionaire has long been a fan of cryptocurrencies – especially Bitcoin, but he also pushes Dogecoin every now and then. last summer he shared for example the image of a Dogcoin sandstorm hurtling towards the global financial system. "It is inevitable," he wrote.
More important than Musk's cryptic tweets in July 2020 were probably Tiktok videos promoting the purchase of the cryptocurrency. According to "Kryptoszene" there were more than 10 million posts with the Hastag "Dogecoin". After all, the rate doubled to around 0.4 cents.
Course tenfold
Compared to what happened yesterday, that's nothing. Because after bobbing around 0.8 cents for a long time, the Dogecoin suddenly rose almost vertically like a rocket until it reached its peak this morning at around 8 cents. The course had increased tenfold within 24 hours. What happened?
The porn industry didn't have a hand this time. It may have to do with another Musk tweet. The high-tech tycoon had only posted a fake Vogue cover titled "Dogue" and showing an elegantly dressed dog. But while this is a greyhound and not a Shiba, the vast majority of the 15,000+ commenters assumed it was alluding to Dogecoin.
After the rather moderate success of his previous push attempts, this should hardly be sufficient as an explanation. But maybe Musk knew what was going on on Reddit in the Wallstreetbets forum. The association of small investors had previously caused a lot of dust by agreeing to push shares in the ailing computer games chain Gamestops. It thwarted hedge funds that were betting on falling prices. And apparently the rebellious community is also involved in Dodgecoin.
A billionaire rarely comes alone
Wallstreetbets already has around 6 million members, more than 1.5 million of which have only been added in the past 48 hours. They also include the Chinese billionaire Justin Sun, founder of the Tron cryptocurrency platform.
Elon Musk is also involved again, after he already stood by Wallstreetbets at Gamestop. On the one hand tweeted he as a continuation of his older tweet, "In retrospect, it was inevitable". On the other hand, he liked a post from an influential Wallstreetbets member called WSBChairman. Yesterday he wrote that on Tuesday he still had 12,000 followers after Elon Musk had liked his tweet, it had become 600,000. He currently has almost 800,000.
The tweet he's alluding to could have been the seemingly innocuous question of whether Dogecoin has ever been at a dollar. The crypto currency is still very far from that, after the peak its price fell again and is now around 4 cents. Apparently, even rebellious small investors know how to take their profits with them.
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