Dogecoin Surges to $0.69, Becoming Fourth-Largest Crypto

The trading frenzy around “people’s cryptocurrency” Dogecoin (DOGE) has propelled the meme coin to a new all-time high of $0.69 today.

According to crypto metrics platform CoinMarketCap, DOGE is currently trading at around $0.65, up 20% on the day and 113% over the past week. Earlier today, however, the token set a new price record of around $0.695, bringing Dogecoin proponents’ short-term dream of “pumping it to $1” significantly closer.

Notably, the level of $0.69 is the exact price target for an artificial “pump” that many traders were promoting and hyping up on social media over the past couple of weeks, starting around “DOGE Day” on April 20. DOGE day itself proved to be a dud, but since then, Dogecoin's listing on crypto exchange Gemini has helped to propel the cryptocurrency's market cap—the total combined price of all tokens currently in circulation—to over $86 billion.

Climbing the ranks

As a result, DOGE has become the fourth-largest crypto by market cap, right behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin. And while they're all enjoying upward price movement in recent weeks, Dogecoin has outpaced most of them. It's a “special case,” opined Ben Weiss, CEO of crypto ATM provider CoinFlip, in an email exchange with Decrypt.

He argued that other factors beyond the overall crypto bull market have contributed to its rise. "One of which is the embracement by prominent figures, such as Elon Musk, who has frequently posted on Twitter about the coin and caused significant price movements,” Weiss told Decrypt.

At the same time, Dogecoin’s freshly boosted market capitalization has made it the 143th-largest asset in the world, according to metrics platform AssetDash. This latest push allowed DOGE to climb up in rank by 48 positions within the span of just one day.

Gemini Adds Dogecoin as Trading Frenzy Crashes Robinhood Again

Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange led by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, today buckled under the pressure of meme coin demand, at last adding Dogecoin to its trading platform. Meanwhile, Robinhood, likely the most popular US trading app that supports DOGE, went down following Dogecoin’s price surge above $0.50. “Dogecoin is the people’s money. It’s organic, irreverent, and fun. It’s not forced on us by a government or some other central authority, it’s chosen by us, for us—by the people, for the p...

Weiss also pointed out that the Dallas Mavericks, an American professional basketball team owned by another famous billionaire Mark Cuban, began accepting DOGE payments on their website in early March, “showing that it can be a viable currency.” Additionally, it is becoming increasingly easy to buy DOGE, either via exchanges, apps, or crypto ATMs.

“Finally, momentum in online forums has caused a flurry of investment as people aim to ‘pump Doge’ to the price of $1. Many people view Doge as the ‘people's cryptocurrency’ because it was created as a joke,” Weiss added.

A wolf in DOGE’s clothing?

Publicly available data also revealed that recent trading activity that pushed DOGE’s price to its new all-time high seems to be artificial and facilitated largely by crypto whales, CoinTelegraph pointed out today. 

Yesterday, for example, the daily transaction volume of Dogecoin amounted to over $58 billion—that’s 70% more than was transferred on Bitcoin’s blockchain ($34 billion) and 260% higher than on Ethereum ($16 billion), according to BitInfoCharts.

Mark Cuban: Dogecoin is ‘Legit', Bitcoin is ‘Financial Religion’

Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur, investor, Shark Tank star and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, took to his keyboard once again to tweet about his new favorite thing: crypto. The chipper 62-year-old firmly trained his sights on the three most talked about digital currencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.  Cuban opened his salvo with a tweet about Bitcoin’s relative worth as a store of value, when compared with that most hallowed and tangible asset: gold. He described bo...

At the same time, Dogecoin’s total number of actual transactions in the last 24 hours—only 92,000—was much lower than Bitcoin’s (304,000) or Ethereum’s (1.5 million). This disparity can be explained by the simple fact that a single DOGE transaction value amounted to $629,000 on average yesterday. By comparison, Ethereum's average transaction value was just $9,559 during the same period.

Meanwhile, on-chain data shows that Dogecoin isn't quite the "people's cryptocurrency" that its proponents claim it to be. Just one address currently holds 28% of Dogecoin’s total supply, while another dozen own 18%. 

This means that an astounding 46% of all existing DOGE—worth $39.6 billion today—is concentrated in the hands of just 13 addresses, while 108 wallets hold 66% in total (although it’s hard to say whether they're controlled by individuals or institutions).