Dogecoin (DOGE): what's up with the crypto industry's leading memcoin?
The Dogecoin symbol, a Shiba Inu dog named Kabosu, passed away in 2024 at the age of 18, but she will continue to delight and inspire her many fans and crypto-enthusiasts around the world. She has already been immortalized in memes and even on the blockchain.
Kabosu has completed her journey, but this is just the beginning for Dogecoin. From this article, you will learn what events happened to the crypto industry's first and most popular memcoins.
Dogecoin and Elon Musk
It's no secret that Dogecoin is one of the favorites of Tesla founder and current owner of X (ex-Twitter) Elon Musk. Often after his tweets, the price of Dogecoin memcoin soars; besides, there have long been rumors that Elon Musk plans to integrate the payment system into X and use the DOGE cryptocurrency for it. However, the famous entrepreneur has repeatedly denied these rumors and has not spread about the plans for Dogecoin.
The DOGE price pump (sharp jump) cases have also been linked to these rumors. For example, the Dogecoin cryptocurrency rose by 15% in January after the XPayments profile appeared on the X platform. Although Elon Musk himself did not comment on the profile's appearance in the coming weeks after its creation, users have speculated that X plans to add a crypto-payments feature and, of course, will use the DOGE cryptocurrency for this purpose.
However, there were still plans to integrate the leading memcoin into X, although it is unknown whether they are relevant now. In April 2022, Elon Musk offered to reduce the cost of Twitter Blue subscriptions for payment in Dogecoins.
Dogecoin's connection to Elon Musk doesn't end there; the entrepreneur's other company, SpaceX, is also involved. The company launched the DOGE-1 satellite in February, which was paid for entirely with the DOGE cryptocurrency. The mission was initially planned for 2022 but was part of another mission, IM-1.
No less bright for Dogecoin supporters was the news that starting in May 2024, Tesla will again accept DOGE cryptocurrency to pay for accessories. Users were prepared for this news, as earlier on the network shared parts of the code from a website in which they found a mention of the main memcoin.
In addition, during a visit to the Tesla factory in Berlin in March, Elon Musk himself mentioned such a possibility, saying, "At some point, Tesla will allow payments in DOGE, and Dogecoin will go to the moon." However, the entrepreneur did not specify exactly what kind of goods the DOGE cryptocurrency would be accepted to pay for. Considering that Elon Musk's other company, SpaceX, has even accepted Dogecoin to pay for a space mission, the possibility of Tesla buying electric cars with DOGE cryptocurrency seems more than realistic.
Dogecoin cultural phenomenon
Despite the fact that the Dogecoin blockchain is essentially just a modified version of Litecoin, which in turn is based on the bitcoin protocol, DOGE has historical value, becoming the first ever memcoin and a favorite for millions of cryptocurrency supporters.
Following the popularity of bitcoin-based ordinals, which allowed NFT to be issued and transmitted directly in that blockchain, Dogecoin developers didn't miss the moment and created their standard called doginals. The developers didn't stop there: under the pseudonym Mini Doge, one of them recorded the legendary 1993 shooter DOOM directly into the Dogecoin blockchain using doginals.
Although Dogecoin has an army of fans, some crypto-enthusiasts doubt its value. For example, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse believes that the Dogecoin cryptocurrency lacks practical use cases. He also noted the lack of projects aimed at benefiting the crypto community.
However, Tesla's adoption of Dogecoin as a payment method suggests otherwise. In addition, the DOGE cryptocurrency is accepted by companies such as online retailer Newegg and airline AirBaltic. According to Cryptwerk, there are more than 2,500 such companies worldwide. Dogecoin is also often used for charity fundraisers. It is likely that Dogecoin will have more applications over time, as the memcoin market is at the very beginning of its journey, and DOGE is the undisputed leader in it.
