Concern! So scare! After an impressive seven day rally that blew the price of Dogecoin up by 362%, today marks the beginning of its pullback, and it’s a quick one.
Doge has a reputation for being the most volatile cryptocurrency—Tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk pumped the price of DOGE by 40% in the course of an hour earlier this year—a phenomenon which some analysts call the ‘Elon Musk Effect.
Dogecoin’s most recent bull run started on April 9 when its price was worth six cents. Over the next eight days it blew up more than sixfold, to the point where at 12:04 AM UTC today the coin was worth 39 cents, though its price has since dropped 12 cents to $0.27, which means it’s very likely that it’s starting to decline. Fast.
A meme currency?
In 2013, software programmers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus created Dogecoin in response to the altcoin minting frenzy. It started off as a tongue-in-cheek response to a novel and emergent crypto bubble.
For its avatar they picked a viral image: the iconic Shiba Inu, better known as Doge, lifted from a meme that to this day is instantly recognisable to anyone that’s trawled the web looking for memes.
Dogecoin had a cult following until Bitcoin’s bull run last winter, when it became a small but often profitable pop culture phenomenon through Twitter. Celebrities like rapper Snoop Dogg, rocker Gene Simmons and multi-billionaire Elon Musk have all had a few things to say about the currency on the platform, pumping its price in the meantime.
It’s been great for Dogecoin. Back in February its market capitalization was $17 billion. Market capitalization, which is worked out by the number of the outstanding supply multiplied by the price of the currency, allows us to chart how much of the global crypto market a currency has cornered, and Doge’s market cap today is up to $50 billion out of a total cryptocurrency market cap of $2 trillion.
The other big movers.
The rest of the crypto market is in a healthy place too. Bitcoin set a new all-time high of $64,863 on Wednesday April 14. Though it has since plunged back down to $61,651.
Perhaps the biggest negative news to come to the currency was the announcement from Turkey’s Central Bank that cryptocurrencies will be outlawed in Turkey from April 30. Bitcoin saw a subsequent 2% dip in price following the news, though it has since regained 1.39%.
Out of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Bitcoin Cash and Vechain grew the most overnight.
BTC fork Bitcoin Cash rallied almost 25% overnight to hit a price of $1,111, that’s a 66% gain from last weekend.
Vechain boasts similar growth. It currently trades at 22 cents, up 33% since last night and 69% since last weekend. The altcoin has been setting new all-time highs in the last week, the most recent being ten hours before this article was written when it hit 27.8 cents. Still, a five cent drop over the space of ten hours is a 17% pullback and that’s certainly a cause for concern.
So, it’s a very volatile market today, but hey, when is it otherwise?
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.