Huobi exchange lists Dogecoin

It’s official: Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that started off as a joke, is now listed on leading exchange Huobi.

The listing is the latest piece of good fortune Dogecoin has been enjoying of late. Earlier this week Elon Musk took to Twitter to declare “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” He also, briefly, changed his main Twitter page to read “Dogecoin CEO.”

Musk’s pronouncements were met with a huge price surge for Dogecoin. The currency’s market capitalization rose by $70m in less than an hour to take it to more than $400m.

However, it’s hard to judge whether Musk’s intervention was the deciding factor for the price surge or for Huobi’s decision to list Dogecoin. Another explanation could be the bitcoin bounce at the beginning of the week, and the subsequent boon nearly all cryptocurrencies enjoyed as a result.

“It was cool to have Elon take part in our little community and we would like to thank him for the, approximately, 17 minutes he was CEO,” Dogecoin developer Ross Nicoll told Decrypt.

“We're excited by the listing on Huobi and it's always great to see wider adoption, looking forward to more in the future!”

The Huobi listing is a big boon for Dogecoin. While it is supported by numerous cryptocurrency exchanges around the globe—such as Poloniex and HitBTC—Dogecoin was yet to make its grand debut on the three most popular crypto exchanges—Huobi, Binance, and Coinbase. Rumors of a Coinbase listing have been circulating for some time, but as of yet, remain just that.  

The wider community recently launched DogePal—which works a bit like PayPal—and there's the prospective release of Doge Racer, a new platform to support gaming.

The cryptocurrency was originally conceived as a joke in 2013 by Australian technologist Jackson Palmer, who stepped away from Dogecoin in 2014, leaving a core team behind.  “It was always like a hobby project, like a side project thing,” Palmer told Decrypt back in October, at the Crypto Springs conference where he was presenting.

But to his great surprise, Dogecoin soon gained a popular following, although the coin’s ethos remains light-hearted, which explains Musk’s sudden involvement.

The Tesla CEO was drawn in after the official Twitter account for Dogecoin posted an online poll asking who should be in charge. Candidates included Vitalik Buterin and Litecoin founder Charlie Lee but Musk came top with almost half of the votes.

While Elon Musk’s attempts to send a rocket to the moon have yet to come true, Dogecoin’s attempt at a ‘moon shot’ looks promising.