On Wednesday morning, Dogecoin was up 20 percent as the cryptocurrency continued to profit from speculative trading.
The digital coin based on a Shiba Inu meme was trading at about 67 cents on the day, up around 21 percent. On Tuesday, it surpassed 50 cents per share for the first time.
This week’s spike coincides with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s scheduled appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Musk is a fan of Dogecoin, and the possibility of him discussing the currency on national television could increase demand.
Dogecoin began as a joke in 2013, during the early stages of the cryptocurrency boom when there was a flood of small, primitive coins entering the market. Doge has regained popularity, which seems to have been fueled by interest from billionaires such as Musk and Mark Cuban, as well as easy access through the free-trading app Robinhood.
“I am concerned that once the excitement has waned, there will be no developers or institutions coming in. But it has the nickname “people’s coin” right now, according to Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz on “Squawk Box.”
“When you consider the whole theory of what this crypto revolution is, there’s something pure about what dogecoin has done,” Novogratz said. “It’s kind of a middle finger to the system.”
Dogecoin has a market cap of $87 billion, according to cryptocurrency firm Coinbase, based on a simple multiplication of price and generated coins. On paper, this is greater than Coinbase’s publicly traded market cap of approximately $56 billion.
The spike in dogecoin did not seem to be affecting larger cryptocurrencies. In early trading, bitcoin was marginally higher, while ether was down 4%.
Dogecoin | Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @njtimesofficial. To get latest updates
