Elon Musk has just made a meme into something much more serious

brown and white short coated dog on gray concrete floor
Photo by Ameya Sawant on Unsplash

Dogecoin, arguably the strangest form of cryptocurrency, skyrocketed 20% in 24 hours following a series of tweets Elon Musk made in late April. Although this cryptocurrency has never reached 1 dollar, its value has surged 11,000% in 2021. 

Before it took off, Dogecoin was actually a joke, and founders Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer never intended it to go anywhere. Born from the popular “doge” meme of 2013, this cryptocurrency’s intention became to create a free platform from traditional banking fees.

At this point, you might be thinking, “why in the world would people invest in this?” A question that crossed my mind too. However, the reason people are investing might shock you because it’s actually genius. 

Investors who are pushing the Dogecoin revolution hope that others will hop on the bandwagon and raise the price of the stocks. The goal is to increase the price of stocks so that some investors sell their stocks as soon as possible at the highest price before others can. Yet, experts are advising the public against this because of how quick Dogecoin’s value could likely crash once everyone begins taking their investments out. 

Dogecoin has become known as the crypto stock market meme (compared to Gamestop’s 2021 stock surge that started because of a meme community). Yet even if Dogecoin’s value does continue to climb, its downfall is how it got its glory: by being a joke that some investors took seriously. 

Although the currency is legitimate, its branding is not. The Dogecoin joke went wrong in the best possible way, leaving founders and investors an extremely difficult task to keep it going. The question remains, what will the future of Dogecoin look like?