Dogecoin Market Cap Nears $100B, Critics Blast 'Joke Coin,' Community Abuzz With Rumors of DOGE Whales

The infamous meme-based cryptocurrency dogecoin is on the move again just before the upcoming Saturday Night Live episode featuring Elon Musk. While dogecoin is up 81% today a lot of cryptocurrency veterans have been warning newbies about the digital currency that was meant to be a joke. Meanwhile, others believe that dogecoin has a lot of potential, and could be a long-standing competitor in the world of crypto assets.

Dogecoin Markets See a Pre-SNL Rise

The cryptocurrency that literally began as a joke, dogecoin (DOGE) is nearing a $100 billion market capitalization on Saturday. DOGE is a crypto asset that was developed and launched in December 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The dogecoin logo features the face of the Shiba Inu dog and the logo is popular due to the original Doge meme that went viral on the internet. Currently, the crypto asset is on a tear up 81% during the last seven days and a whopping 1,073% during the last month.

This has drawn a lot of attention and not only that, but Tesla’s Elon Musk has been tweeting about the Shiba Inu meme coin for quite some time now. Musk called dogecoin his “favorite” crypto once and some people assume he may mention DOGE on the upcoming Saturday Night Live show airing on May 8.

A few other celebrities have also been saying good things about dogecoin on Twitter including Gene Simmons, Snoop Dogg, and Mark Cuban. But not everyone is so nice to the Shiba Inu meme-based crypto asset as veterans have warned people about the asset’s risks.

One issue with DOGE is the fact that there are billions of units in circulation and as of today, the supply is around 129,517,138,098 DOGE. Dogecoin can also still be mined with ASIC mining rigs. Furthermore, unlike crypto assets like bitcoin with a hard supply cap of 21 million, the Dogecoin network is inflationary as Jackson Palmer decided to remove the protocols cap which was 100 billion DOGE. Another reason people dislike dogecoin (DOGE) is because of the whales holding the coin.

The Mysterious Dogecoin Whales and the ‘Punchline’

This DOGE address for instance holds 36 billion coins at the time of publication and some believe the owner is a whale and others think it may be an exchange. The top seven addresses in the dogecoin-rich list own quite a bit of the supply. Into the Block statistics show the concentration by large DOGE holders is 65% which is much higher than most networks. Data for “Holders’ Composition by Time Held” indicates that dogecoin holders do not hold as long as they would with assets like BTC or BCH. 54% of DOGE owners have held for over a year and 21% for less than a month according to Into the Block stats.

Many editorials and opinion pieces have been published warning people about investing in dogecoin. One article called “Dogecoin’s a Joke, Don’t Make Yourself the Punchline” published on kiplinger.com gives the meme-based currency a scathing critique. Others believe dogecoin is the future and that it could actually make it into mainstream acceptance. A recently published study written by protos.com indicates that some big DOGE whales have “strong hands.”

“Dogecoin’s five biggest whales are now sitting on over $3 billion worth of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency— up from a measly $40 million at the start of the year,” the report notes. “One of the dogecoin whales, which we’ve dubbed “Bs4,” is alone holding more than 3.1 billion DOGE, the equivalent of $1 billion at today’s prices.”

The protos.com report adds:

Some believe Bs4 could belong to one of Elon Musk’s sons. The Tesla billionaire tweeted he’d bought some dogecoin for his birthday one day after that billion DOGE deposit.

The study by protos.com further explains that its been following five dogecoin whales and two of them have been selling. “The other three whales are yet to withdraw any DOGE at all. Either they have very strong hands or they’ve lost access to the associated private keys,” the report’s author stresses. “At press time, these five Dogecoin whales control roughly 6% of Dogecoin’s supply (about 8 billion DOGE),” the protos.com report concludes on April 19.