Temptation to get well and truly into the whole dogecoin craze is sweeping the world at record pace. From first-time casual investors to the most experienced traders, dogecoin came from nowhere to become the coin of the moment.
At least, in terms of its impressive growth of more than 12,000% this year alone, and the fact that it has been making non-stop headlines for some time.
But does this mean that now really is the time to take a bite out of the dogecoin? Is it worth getting in on the game at (semi) ground level, or has this dog already had its day?
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin started life as a joke, only to become (at the time of writing) the fifth biggest cryptocurrency market worldwide. It was inspired by a popular meme at the time, which featured the deliberately misspelled word “doge” to describe a Shiba Inu dog.
The pair responsible for creating the coin – software engineers Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer – admitted that they threw it together in a matter of hours and did so purely as a joke. It was launched to poke fun at bitcoin and as a very tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt, which would subsequently snowball into something nobody could have predicted.
With each mention of dogecoin as the preferred currency of a whole bunch of investors, the value of this no-longer-a-joke crypto coin has skyrocketed. It’s similar in terms of its basic mechanics to bitcoin, but has a tendency to attract a more light-hearted and casual audience of investors.
Today Dogecoin is no joke. Among its boosters is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called Dogecoin his favorite cryptocurrency. Musk also named Dogecoin the “people’s crypto,” and promised to plant a physical Dogecoin token on the moon.
Dogecoin Performance to Date
As of today – May 19 2021 – dogecoin is trading at just over 41 cents. Far lower than its all-time record-high in excess of 70 cents, but still impressive performance on the whole. Unsurprisingly, the fact that the value of dogecoin has spiked more than 12,000% this year alone has captured the imaginations of established and casual investors worldwide.
While the mining process (or digging in this case) with dogecoin is more or less the same as that with bitcoin, the two differ significantly in that there is no lifetime cap on the number of dogecoins that can be added to the blockchain.
This has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse, though means that dogecoin by its very nature is extremely inflationary. The more of something there is, the lower its individual unit value – something that applies to all types of currency across the board.
Nevertheless, the fact that dogecoin is significantly easier to dig for than bitcoin has cemented its popularity among a massive community of miners. It only takes around a minute to ratify new blocks on the dogecoin blockchain, whereas it takes around 10 minutes to do the same on the bitcoin blockchain.
Should You Buy Dogecoin?
As for the million-dollar question, whether to buy dogecoin at this stage in the game is almost entirely a judgment call. For those who were savvy enough to buy vast volumes of dogecoin before this year, the rewards have indeed been rich. But at the same time, the value of the dogecoin has also fallen significantly from its all-time high of over 70 cents a while back.
Just as with bitcoin and all other forms of cryptocurrency, dogecoin is exceptionally volatile in nature. In addition, the fact that new coins are entering the market all the time puts further pressure on a coin that was “created for sillies” in the words of its creators.
That said, dogecoin is one of just a handful of major crypto coins that continue to attract the acclaim and recommendation of high-profile business figures and investors. In addition, some have (cautiously) predicted that dogecoin could climb as high as $1 by the end of the year.
There are no guarantees, but the fact that dogecoin is comparatively quick to mine makes it a form of cryptocurrency that’s well worth checking out. Though as with all crypto coins, those looking to buy dogecoin in pursuit of profits are advised to start out with just a token investment, rather than sinking a ton of capital into something even its creators didn’t have high hopes for!
