The blunt answer here, likely, should be no, period. Dogecoin (DOGE) was born as a joke among cryptocurrencies, and not as a proper investment. Of course, there’s a giant “but” here. Currently, DOGE is the first and most successful memecoin. It flaunts a market cap of over $11 billion (even in a bearish market), and a price of $0.08 per token —considering its large supply. So, why are people putting money here?
As we must remember, Dogecoin è stato lanciato in 2013 by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus. It’s survived wild things in crypto, and is still here, stronger than ever. Its community remains firm and growing, while new plans are in the works. Can really DOGE go to the moon?
Internal system and developers
DOGE is a fork (kind of a clone) from the now-defunct Luckycoin (LKY) and the silver of cryptocurrencies, Litecoin (LTC). Therefore, it works with a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system, very much like Bitcoin. It’s possible to mine Dogecoin using ASIC machines, and mine it at the same time that other coins with the same algorithm (PoW Scrypt), such as Litecoin. The mining reward per block is 10,000 DOGEs (around $840).
However, the difficulty has grown too much over the years, as more and more miners join the network. Thus, Dogecoin isn’t a profitable investment to make solo mining or avoid using ASICs anymore. The miners should join a pool, or build whole mining farms with numerous machines. Energy is another point to consider. Since it’s a PoW coin, its mining will consume a lot of electricity. It’s important, then, to have cheap electricity and, preferably, from renewable sources.
Ad oggi, Dogecoin has a circulating supply of 132.67 billion coins, and it’s expecting to issue five billion coins more every year. As its team explained on the Sito ufficiale, the supply isn’t really unlimited: “Dogecoin is only ‘infinite’ over ‘infinite time’. Over finite time, its issuance is, in fact, finite.” Besides, the team isn’t considering burning supply “to artificially inflate their prices.”
Now, after some years without updates, the development team regrouped in 2021. According to the website, “the Dogecoin development team has consisted of a small group of maintainers coordinating the work of more than 40 contributors”. In addition, we can find 272 contributors in the Dogecoin Core repository on GitHub.
Adoption and supporters
Besides an investment, Dogecoin can be a user-friendly, cheap, and international payment method. Its transaction fees haven’t ever surpassed its record of $8.2 in March 2022, which is an amount far lower than in other coins, like BTC or ETH. And it’s even lower since the average transaction fee is at $0.1 now —a usual mark [Messari]. As a result, we can find over 2,058 merchants worldwide accepting DOGE as a payment method [Cryptwerk].
Among the brands and companies accepting this coin for products and services, we have the NBA basketball team Dallas Mavericks, the European airline AirBaltic, the electronics online retailer Newegg, AMC Theaters, the luxury resorts by Kessler Collection, the electric car manufacturer Tesla, and GameStop (after an intense story around this currency).
Additionally, as registered by Coin ATM Radar, there are over 14,000 ATMs worldwide to buy and sell DOGE in exchange for fiat. Most of them are in the United States, though, with another large percentage across Europe. In the same fashion, Dogecoin has been listed by over 120 crypto exchanges worldwide, including Alfacash.
Beyond the numbers, in August 2021, the previously dissolved Dogecoin Foundation revived with new members. They even count on the participation of Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder), and Jared Birchall, who’s on behalf of Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla and SpaceX). Musk has been, indeed, a strong supporter of Dogecoin over the years. We can say this is his favorite cryptocurrency.
Now that he acquired Twitter, everyone is expecting him to include this coin as a payment method on the popular social network —eventually.
Next updates
New members, developers, and volunteers published a “Trailmap” to follow the next Dogecoin updates. In general terms, they’re aiming to create new tools for developers, their own wallet/node, a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system to enable staking, and even a radio network to make offline transactions. Dubbed “RadioDoge”, is described as follows:
“RadioDoge focuses on using cheap and reliable Radio technology (HF/LoRaWAN) combined with the global Starlink satellite network to enable cheaply deployable, wide-scale access to Dogecoin for people outside the reach of traditional internet infrastructure.”
In the meantime, they’ll have a hackathon (dogeathon) from November 15 to November 19 in Victoria, Australia, and online. The goal is “building the Dogecoin Ecosystem with new integration options: LibDogecoin, GigaWallet API, Core API, Doge-Eth Bridge, & More”. So far, different teams are planning to build solutions like a bridge to Ethereum, a Doge name service, educational projects, and second layers.
The Dogecoin Foundation also handles the marketplace DogeSwag, where it’s possible to buy Doge-themed tees made from sustainable materials. Another active project is Dogecoin Folding at Home, progettato to use idle computing power to help in the study of several illnesses, including COVID-19.
Dogecoin price predictions
The total supply of this coin and its team’s refusal to burn part of the stock could seriously limit the price. If we take into account the next five billion coins to be issued in 2023, the supply would ascend to 137.67 billion units. To reach the $1 per token mark, the Dogecoin market capitalization should then be around the same amount in USD ($137.6 billion).
Its larger market cap so far has been $72.5 billion in May 2021 [CMC]. Considering this, the market cap would still need to increase by over 89% from that record, to hit a $1 price per token. The amount of adoption needed for that isn’t impossible (BTC and ETH already have it), but it is difficult to reach. Dogecoin would be a nice investment if it succeeds in this.
Of course, there are different opinions from several websites and experts. Likely, the most bullish is PricePrediction.net, which used an AI system to determine that DOGE could get a price of even $2.9 per token by 2031. Dall'altro lato, Coin Price Forecast is the most bearish one, calculating a price of barely $0.12 by 2029. Although, Dogecoin increases as an investment in both cases: by 3,525% to the first, and by 50% to the last.
Dogecoin as investment
The early birds of the Doge army are enjoying high returns now if they waited enough from 2013/2014. This coin started with a price of around $0.0004, and its All-Time-High (ATH) was at $0.73 in May 2021 [CMC]. That’s an increase of over 182,000%. For example, if someone put in only $100 since the beginning (2013), that amount increased to $182,100 in 2021.
After all this data, can we say that Dogecoin is a good investment? Well, we should also mention that DOGE has lost 89% from its ATH. On the other hand, 2022 hasn’t been excessively favorable to crypto in general terms. Dogecoin still has the potential to recover that mark and surpass it in the upcoming years, especially considering that its developing new tools and projects.
Elon Musk and Twitter could also be key factors in increasing the Dogecoin value, but we can’t really know for sure now. Please remember that the investment world and cryptos are risky. But we can surely recommend you expand your portfolio. Just do your own research (DYOR) primo!
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