On Sunday (August 15), billionaire investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban explained why he remains bullish on popular meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin ($DOGE).
Dogecoin was initially released on 6 December 2013, as a “fun and friendly internet currency.” It was created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. It is “a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency” that has as its mascot “Doge”, a Shiba Inu (a Japanese breed of dog).
Since then, its popularity has substantially increased, especially this year, mostly thanks to support by billionaires Elon Musk (the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX) and Mark Cuban, to the point that it is currently the seventh most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of over $45 billion.
Back in February, Dogecoin creator and co-founder Billy Markus wrote about $DOGE in an open letter published on Reddit (on subreddit “/dogecoin“).
This is what he had to say about the birth of Dogecoin:
“As you may have heard, it was indeed created for sillies after Jackson Palmer made an flippant tweet about it that idea being the ‘next big thing’ and I threw it together, without any expectation or plan. It took about 3 hours to make, with the bulk of that time making alterations to the client to make the text Comic Sans and some custom graphics and wording for different pieces of the UI.“
As for Cuban, he is the majority owner of the professional basketball team Dallas Mavericks, as well as one of the “sharks” on the highly popular reality show “Shark Tank” (which is aired on the ABC television network in the U.S.).
On March 4, crypto payment processor BitPay announced via a press release that it was allowing merchants to accept Dogecoin, the internet’s favorite meme cryptocurrency, for payments, and that “the Dallas Mavericks would be the first to accept Dogecoin.”
On March 27, Cuban had this to say during an interview on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” about investing in the world’s most popular meme cryptocurrency:
“Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was created as a joke in 2013 by these two programmers, and they just made it to mess around. And then, probably two years ago, people started talking about the meme online, and started buying it and probably within the last six months the number of people buying it has just skyrocketed into the millions, and the value has gone up incredibly, and I’ll give you an example.
“My son and I bought some for less than a penny. Jake is 11 years old, but you know $30 worth, I think it was, at less than a penny. Then it went up to six cents. He bought a little bit more. Then it went up to 40 cents, and now it’s about 26 cents. So,the question everybody wants to know — is Dogecoin a good investment?
“And here’s the reason I got Jake into it. It’s not necessarily the best investment you can make, but you can buy it on Robinhood, and signing up and trading on Robinhood is free. So, that’s one thing. The second thing is it’s about 26 cents for Dogecoin. So, if you would go and spend $5, $10, $15, that’s a better bet, better investment, than buying a lottery ticket, and you know what? It could go up, and the second part about it is if it doesn’t go up and you want to spend it, you can buy merchandise on the Mavericks store, hopefully soon on the Ellen shop, so it’s also becoming a digital currency, which is crazy if you think back to its origins…
“Overall, when someone brings up Dogecoin to you and asks you if it’s a good investment, I wouldn’t say it’s the world’s best investment, but it’s a whole lot better than a lottery ticket, and it’s a great way to learn and start understanding cryptocurrencies.“
Then, on May 3, while trying to explain in a tweetstorm “why crypto assets have value”, he made the following comments about Dogecoin:
“Meme coins like Doge only work if they gain utility and users use them for that utility. As long as you can spend Doge, because we know it’s annual inflation rate is set at 5b coins, it can gain SOME value as the utility grows. It becomes like any other currency…
“As long as more companies take doge for products/services, then Doge can be a usable currency because it MAY hold its purchasing value better than a $ in your bank. If interest rates skyrocket or the amount spent falls or stagnates, so will Doge. Yes, a joke is now legit…“
Well, yesterday, Cuban was once again explaining why he continues to remain bullish on Dogecoin.
Here is how he explained on Twitter what he finds appealing about $DOGE:
“The point about DOGE that people miss is that DOGE’s imperfections and simplicity are it’s greatest strengths. You can only use it to do 2 things: Spend It or HODL It. Both are easy to understand. And it’s cheap to buy. Which makes it a community anyone can join and enjoy.“
He went on to explain what makes $DOGE stand out from the crowd of thousands of altcoins that are out there:
“Difference is community. That is what makes DOGE work. With out the community it’s nothing. But that also the same for all popular crypto. Wo a network effect BTC is nothing“
According to data by TradingView, currently (as of 12:30 UTC on August 16), DOGE-USD is trading at $0.3440, up nearly 16% in the past 24-hour period (and up 88.80% in the past one-month period).
DISCLAIMER
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.
