It would be funny if Dogecoin becomes the currency of the future on Earth. These were the words of the world’s richest man and American businessman Elon Musk when asked for his opinion on the cryptocurrency and what its prospects looked like via Social media application, ClubHouse.
A cryptocurrency is a digitally secure currency which has no central regulatory body. In recent years, cryptocurrency has become a viable payment and business option.
Investors in cryptocurrency have made lots of money by buying these currencies and watching patiently as they grow. Cryptocurrency has become acceptable to numerous industries, including rather surprisingly the sports industry.
In January 2021, David Barral was signed by Spanish third division side, DUX Internacional de Madrid from Racing Santander using popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, making him the first professional footballer to be signed using cryptocurrency.
The club is sponsored by a cryptocurrency trading company, CRIPTAN. Before him, NFL star, Russell Okung was the first high profile sportsperson to be paid using cryptocurrency. The Carolina Panthers star was paid half of his $13 million salary in Bitcoin.
Dogecoin was created by Software engineers, Billy Markus, and Jackson Palmer in 2013 as a joke. They intended to create a payment platform that was easy to use and free from all the traditional banking stress and attendant fees.
They wanted to create something more far-reaching than Bitcoin at the time. It was made as a hybrid of Luckycoin and Litecoin, making its mining only possible through a detailed and deliberate process. In December 2013, Dogecoin witnessed both sides of the crypto market.
First, it spiked by about 300%, rising from $0.00026 to $0.00095 within only 72 hours as a ripple effect of the Chinese banks ban on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies investment, before it dropped again by around 80% due to this same policy, and that people were using up the small mining resources it had quickly.
This was its first major drop. Following these events, in January of 2014, Dogecoin briefly had more trading volume than Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies combined. Despite this, however, it still had a much lower market capitalization than Bitcoin.
Between 2017 and 2018 during the Cryptocurrency Bubble, Dogecoin briefly peaked at around $0.017 for a single coin, before it dropped back. Currently, its total market capitalization was around $2 Billion. In January 2021, a Reddit board spoke about making dogecoin to cryptocurrency equivalent of GameStop and this caused it to rise by around 800%.
Dogecoin peaked at $0.07 on Friday January 29th, before a sharp drop saw it reach $0.03939 per coin on Monday February 1st.
With Elon Musk and lots of amateur cryptocurrency traders and investors backing Dogecoin, it would be unwise to bet against it rising exponentially in the nearest future. Bitcoin also started in this manner and is now at $33,726 per coin.
Over time, 113 billion Dogecoin have been mined globally, with around 127 Billion Dogecoin currently in circulation worldwide. Cryptocurrency trading is a risky business, and it requires patience at the very least.