Reddit and Twitter users are urging retail investors to buy up the joke token and raise its price to $1.
Bitcoin and Ethereum fell during Tuesday trading, extending a price decline that began last week, while joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin rallied further after a record surge.
Bitcoin was down 4.6% by 9.20 AM in London, while Ethereum was down around 5.3%. The world’s two most highly valued cryptocurrencies were trading at $54,763.19 and $2,134.70 respectively.
Meanwhile, Dogecoin was up 18% at $0.4075, a jump that coincided with social media attention on 20 April. Supporters of the cryptocurrency are celebrating the date – which is also International Weed Day – as “DogeDay” and are urging fans to buy up the token in a bid to raise its price to $1.
The price of Dogecoin has risen by more than 400% in the past week and by more than 5,000% since the beginning of the year, a rally that has given it the fifth-highest market cap among cryptocurrencies. The total value of its tokens in circulation is now over $52 billion.
Dogecoin has also benefited greatly from the light-hearted support of social media celebrities such as Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg, whose joking references to the token on Twitter preceded an 800% price jump in January.
"Dogecoin has become the new GameStop, with frenzied trading potentially going to deliver a bloody nose to novice investors,” said Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group.
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Green also suggested that the Dogecoin push is being pitched as a battle of a community-backed cryptocurrency versus existing crypto giants like Bitcoin, echoing the GameStop trading frenzy that took on a narrative of underdog retail investors versus established Wall Street insiders.
