Redditors rally as Dogecoin halves in value following a sevenfold surge last week

What just happened? Dogecoin saw a sevenfold spike as of Friday last week as day-traders jumped on the meme-based cryptocurrency. The value of the coin was cut in half by Saturday however as marketplaces including Robinhood, who are still receiving criticism around GameStop stock from last week, stopped account deposits for crypto purchases. This led to an outcry by Redditors and Twitter users who are trying to bolster the coin and prevent panic selling.

Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency featuring the famed “doge” shiba-inu meme, famously started as a bit of a meme itself. Never terribly successful, but consistently in the crypto zeitgeist, the coin has made headlines this week as the ever-growing community of day-traders on Reddit and Twitter decided to focus their efforts on keeping the Dogecoin alive as its value dipped by nearly half on Saturday.

Retail traders posted online trying to bolster confidence in the coin and begged skeptics not to sell in the ensuing panic. As of Friday, the coin had surged seven times its value to $0.07 but was cut short as marketplaces such as Robinhood halted account deposits for cryptocurrency buying due to “extraordinary market conditions.” This did not halt buying using funds previously deposited however.

The coin is down around 50% in the last 24 hours, hovering around $0.025 as of writing.

Users on subreddit SatoshiStreetBets, are among the community begging traders not to panic sell. The Reddit page is the self-described “crypto version of WallStreetBets,” the subreddit behind the GameStop stock surge and fluctuations (GameStonk) this week.

The rallying mantra of the subreddit does indeed seem to mirror that of WSB, as one user was quoted saying, “the moment we lose each other is the moment we fail.” Other posts and replies deem this a “fight” and attempt to instil confidence in the coin by advertising its real-world functionality and earning potential.

Many readers might be wondering, where is Elon Musk in all of this? There was his infamous “Gamestonks” tweet last week, and of course he could not stay his hand here either. Musk’s tweet contributions included a cover page of “Dogue” magazine, and a simple message back in December, “One word: Doge.” Many took this as a push to invest in Dogecoin and might have been a contributing factor to the massive spike before the weekend.

pic.twitter.com/a6kmk0PEgM

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 28, 2021

Like other recent underdogs (underdoges?) in the stock market, Dogecoin’s future is very unpredictable. We still recommend to err on the side of caution in this or any recent similar “short squeeze” investing, and not to see it as a get-rich-quick scheme.