The power of Vitalik Buterin: on Friday (July 5), one day after Vitalik Buterin declared his feelings for Dogecoin (DOGE), Binance, probably the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange (by adjusted trading volume), announced that it was going to list DOGE.
On Thursday (July 4), a Dogecoin supporter on Twitter, “Samu”, asked Vitalik what he thinks about Dogecoin:
Hei Genius,
What do you think of Dogecoin?
Please answer me— Samu (@QuodSemper) July 4, 2019
Vitalik replied:
I'm very pro-Dogecoin.
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) July 4, 2019
Interestingly, when “Samu” had claimed on June 27 that we would see a Dogecoin price rally soon, Jon McAfee had replied:
I have to agree
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 27, 2019
Anyway, the team that handles the official Dogecoin Twitter account was so excited by Vitalik’s endorsement that they want to send him a DOGE t-shirt:
❤️
We still have your shirt, and no idea how to get it to you.
— Dogecoin (@dogecoin) July 4, 2019
Vitalik then suggested that the best way to give him the t-shirt would be at the Devcon5 Ethereum developers’ conference in Osaka, Japan, in October.
This is how the Binance team announced the support for DOGE on the Binance website:
Binance will list Dogecoin (DOGE) and open trading for DOGE/BNB, DOGE/BTC, DOGE/USDT, DOGE/PAX and DOGE/USDC trading pairs at 2019/07/05 12:00 PM (UTC). Users can now start depositing DOGE in preparation for trading.
And shortly after this announcement, Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”), Co-Founder and CEO of Binance, explained the reason for adding support for DOGE to Binance.com:
This one is an exception, as there isn't much new tech development (I guess it was never about the tech for this one). The users/community is large, and a famous “ex-CEO” (cough @elonmusk) helps!
Enjoy! https://t.co/zMuYuLSvmF
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) July 5, 2019
This news comes roughly two months after Coinbase announced (on May 1) that “Coinbase Wallet”, its user-controlled (i.e. non-custodial) wallet app for iOS and Android, is being updated to include Dogecoin (DOGE) support.
Coinbase Wallet’s addition of support for DOGE ahead of tokens/coins for higher profile crypto projects confused many members of the crypto community, with some believing that Coinbase’s decision came as a result of Elon Musk’s endorsement on April 2:
Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2019
According to CryptoCompare, at press time (08:00 UTC on July 5), DOGE is trading at $0.004155, up over 32% in the past 24-hour period, tereby making it the 26th most valuable cryptoasset (with a reported market cap of almost $510 million):