The Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) price is rocketing, up 90% over the past 24 hours alone.
At the current 24 cents, Dogecoin now ranks as the 8th largest cryptocurrency in existence, with a market cap of US$23.4 billion (AU$30.4 billion).
That's according to data from CoinMarketCap, which also tells me that, while Dogecoin doesn't trade on the newly listed Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), you can turn to crypto exchanges Binance, Huobi Global, OKEx, FTX, or CoinTiger, among others.
Why is the Dogecoin price heading for the moon?
Back on 1 January this year, you could have picked up a single Dogecoin for less than half a cent. Or 0.469 cents, to be precise.
At the time of writing – and it's changing almost minute by minute – the Dogecoin price is 23.8 cents. That's a gain of – wait for it – 4,996% since we awoke to celebrate the new year.
The Bitcoin price, by comparison, is up a more sedate 118% so far in 2021.
So, what's driving the Dogecoin price to the moon?
Certainly, Dogecoin has benefited from the broader cryptocurrency bull run of late, which have driven Bitcoin and Ether (the number 2 crypto by market cap) to new record highs as well.
That bull run can be attributed to a wider involvement in cryptos by institutional investors, alongside growing investor unease that central bank and government stimulus efforts will see a surge in inflation in global fiat currencies.
On the institutional side, this week's listing of crypto exchange Coinbase on the tech-heavy Nasdaq offered a boost for most of the leading digital assets.
The billionaires' boost
And let's not forget Elon Musk.
The Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) founder earlier this year was credited for aiding Bitcoin's price rise when he announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin for its vehicles. And that the company would hold onto those Bitcoin rather than exchanging them for dollars.
Musk is also credited with providing some strong tailwinds for the Dogecoin price.
On 1 April (yes, April Fool's Day), the Tesla billionaire tweeted "Doge Barking at the Moon", along with an image of just that. The implication was widely believed to mean that Musk expected the Dogecoin price to rocket.
As indeed it has.
Speaking of billionaires, let's not forget Mark Cuban. He's the owner of the US basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks. His NBA team began accepting Dogecoin for payments last month.
On Wednesday, 14 April, Cuban looks to have stirred the coals under the Dogecoin price when he tweeted:
FYI, the Mavs sales in dogecoin have increase 550pct over the past month. We have now sold more than 122k in Doge in merchandise! We will never sell 1 single Doge ever. So keep buying.
And if the Dogecoin price needed even more institutional support, it got it from Conagra Brands Inc's (NYSE: CAG), Slim Jim brand.
As CoinDesk reports:
Smoked meat stick vendor Slim Jim has an actual official dogecoin strategy…
The social media-savvy snack food saw its Twitter follower count increase 160% and tweet impressions soar to the moon (35 million impressions in 25 days) after it began engaging in Shiba Inu meme coin content last quarter, according to the CEO of parent company Conagra Brands.
"We've seen a marked uptick in audience interaction, including direct engagement and advocacy from the person [who] created dogecoin," CEO Sean Connolly said on Conagra's April 8 earnings call.
A bit of history
Dogecoin was created by the US' Billy Markus and Australia's Jackson Palmer. The company emerged from (or was forked from, in crypto parlance) Litecoin in 2013. Based on a dog meme, they intended the altcoin to be a light-hearted version of the more serious cryptos, like Bitcoin.
Unlike Bitcoin, which is capped at a total final supply of 21 million once the last virtual coins have been mined, the Dogecoin supply is uncapped. That means potentially an unlimited amount of Dogecoin could be mined.
What that will mean for the Dogecoin price longer-term, remains to be seen.
