Search interest for the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) exploded during the cryptocurrency’s massive 10,000% price rally, going from an average of 135,000 monthly searches in April 2020 to 16.5 million in April 2021.
Dogecoin was created back in 2013 as a joke. The cryptocurrency’s community is well-known for taking on philanthropic projects, which included helping charitable organizations. It made headlines in 2014 after raising more than $25,000 worth of DOGE to let the Jamaican bobsleigh team attend the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
According to new insights from data provider Semrush, shared with CryptoGlobe, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency saw its popularity skyrocket in January 2021, a month in which the price of the cryptocurrency jumped over 570% on a Reddit-fueled surge to a hit a then new all-time high.
The surge was seemingly related to the WallStreetBets subreddit and its battle against hedge funds over the price of GameStop’s shares. It started after a parody account on Twitter going by WSB Chairman asked whether DOGE had ever traded at $1, other users piled on.
At one point, DOGE’s trading volume briefly overtook that of Bitcoin and Ethereum on Binance. Notably, search interest for DOGE cooled down in February when Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other celebrities first started tweeting about the meme-inspired cryptocurrency.
That month, searches for Dogecoin were seen 9 million times across search engines, as Musk subtly started tweeting about the cryptocurrency. That same month, Tesla announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) it had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.
Data shows that this initial pump helped DOGE jump from $0.007 in early January to hit $0.03 in early February. That same month the cryptocurrency hit $0.07 before cooling down. In March, searches for the keyword “dogecoin” dropped by 2.2 million even though Musk kept on tweeting about the cryptocurrency.
In March the cryptocurrency’s price rise stalled and even dropped to $0.05 without seeing any notable pumps or dumps. Interest for it was seemingly dropping steadily. In April, it skyrocketed to 13.6 million searches.
That month kicked off with Musk saying “SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.” The cryptocurrency’s price didn’t start pumping then, however, but only after Musk implied that the “literal dogecoin” was going to the moon “very soon” in a follow-up tweet.
That tweet saw the price of DOGE start pumping, so much so that a few days later it was trading at $0.4. Musk and other celebrities kept on helping the cryptocurrency grow afterward, until it hit a $0.74 all-time high in mid-May after Musk said it is a “a hustle” on Saturday Night Live.
Other cryptocurrencies notably took advantage of that pump. Safemoon, a deflationary cryptoasset, used Twitter engagement to make headlines and saw its search volume go from nothing to nearly 50,000 searches per month in March. By April, its interactions with Elon Musk saw it get to 800,000 searches that month. In comparison, searches for “XRP” and “Cryptocurrency” were of about one million in April.
The price of Dogecoin has seen been dropping and while the pump helped developers restart work on the cryptocurrency, some analysts believe its investors are still going to see more downside. Legendary financial advisor and best-selling author Ric Edelman has revealed he believes meme-inspired cryptocurrency is a “scam” that will end “very badly,” even though he is bullish on the cryptocurrency space in general.
Similarly, a widely followed pseudonymous cryptocurrency analyst and bitcoin bull has predicted that the price of Dogecoin is “programmed” to plunge to $0.05 and that even Tesla CEO Elon Musk would be unable to save it. The analyst posted a chart showing that the DOGE price chart was forming a head and shoulders pattern.
Dogecoin supporters appear to be doubling down, however. Glauber Contessoto, a Dogecoin investor famous for investing his $250,000 life savings in the meme-inspired cryptocurrency in early February to become a millionaire, is doubling down on his bet In the meme-inspired cryptocurrency by investing an additional $25,000 in it.
In an interview last month, Contessoto said he did not lose faith in his investment and was planning to add more Dogecoin to his holdings during dips. He planned on holding onto the investment for at least one year.
Per his words, people get “caught up in the short-term and don’t have the patience to see the investment all the way through.” He added that volatility comes “with the territory,” and investors who aren’t able to “stomach the fluctuations” are “maybe not cut out for crypto.”
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The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
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