Dogecoin, the tenth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $10.5 billion, outperformed any of the other top 50 coins over the last 24 hours, with gains of over 15%. 

For the week, DOGECOIN gained nearly 30% and was only outperformed by Telegram's TON token.

Behind The Rise...

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter nw seems to be a 'sure thing', as the Tesla and SpaceX CEO walked through the doors of the Twitter offices earlier today. 

From what we can tell, social sentiment is driving the price, with people assuming Twitter will eventually implement the use of Dogecoin, somehow.

Bad Time To Bet Against The DOGE...

Almost $9 million in Dogecoin futures positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, almost all by people taking short positions.

The increased attention going to DOGE seems to have spread to its main competitor, SHIBA, which posted gains of around 7%. 

It's Easy To Downplay the strength of DOGE - but this 'joke coin' is showing some legitimately strong fundamentals...

A large, seemingly majority of people holding DOGE today appear to be true believers in the coin's long-term potential.

Wallets holding DOGE for more than 1 year are currently at an all-time high of 2.8 million, according to IntoTheBlock. 

Also, wallets that buy and sell within a month are at an all-time low - only 132,000 wallets can be considered 'short-term traders' - this is the lowest since mid 2020.

Recently, Dogecoin was the reason for a new lawsuit that has been filed against Elon Musk...

We would prefer that you buy some more #bitcoin.

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) August 17, 2022

Musk says he hasn't sold any of his privately owned crypto...

Musk, apparently browsing Dogecoin chatter on Twitter saw one user say the upgrade "helps secure the network and lower the transaction fees" triggering a response from Musk, saying he sees this as "important".

The thread continued to outline how the dogecoin upgrade will improve the network, saying there's currently only 205 computers "running the newest update" and "more nodes need to upgrade."

In another recent reply to another tweet about Dogecoin getting an upgrade, Musk shared his view on what that upgrade would do "There is merit to doge maximizing base layer transaction rate and minimizing transaction cost with exchanges acting as the de facto secondary layer". 

The tweet he was replying to stated that this "will position doge perfectly to become one of the most used currencies in the world."

The end result, according to Musk "Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down."

Considering Musk once polled the question 'Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?' - it's not out of the realm of possibilities that once a Dogecoin upgrade was complete, this is how he would show his approval.   

Remember, it was Tesla accepting Bitcoin that set off Bitcoin's biggest bull run of this year - what effect would this have on the world's biggest memecoin? 

There's a growing group of people set on turning a coin that started as a joke into a legitimate cryptocurrency - at what point does it cross over, and 'memecoin' is no longer an accurate label? 

What's the hottest coin of the moment in this massive bull market? Bitcoin? Ethereum? Ripple (XRP)? Litecoin?! Nope.

Oh wait... it's that silly Dogecoin isn't it?

Still, nope.

It's actually bit more ridiculous than that - it's Shiba Inu coin (which is also the name of Doge's breed.

Dogecoin's 462% 14 day gain was impressive, but less-so after seeing Shiba Imu's 3643% explosion...

The creators are just as surprised as anyone, calling it a "Decentralized Meme Token that grew into a vibrant ecosystem" - but they're not taking the success lying down as they continue to expand and push for more growth.

SHIB now hopes to become an artist incubator and a fun, less up-tight crypto community, of which they already have 54,000 members.

The Dodgecoin KILLER?

Here's where it gets interesting - the tokenomics are well... impressive.

First off, there's no team/founder tokens.  The creator and team bought their tokens on the market just like you would have to.

Liquidity put into Uniswap can't be pulled (at least they claim) they've thrown away the keys, making it impossible to touch.

If this wasn't sounding ridiculous enough, don't worry we're still discussing a meme coin. When you hear they've burned 75% of the Shiba token supply by sending them to Ethereum's creator Vitalik, you're reminded this shouldn't be taken too seriously.

The anonymous founder, who goes by 'Ryoshi' explains:
"We are an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building. The team and admin are all volunteers here and have had to market buy the tokens the same as everybody else, so there is no bucket of tokens or funds to pay to anybody or anything. If you wish to help the project you certainly can and work with us to find a way to make your efforts the most valuable. We believe through the power of collective decentralization we can build something stronger than a centralized team ever could create. ALL HAIL THE SHIBA"

However, Vitalk now has more wealth in SHIB than ETH...

Worthless when he first received them,  the current bull run SHIB is having has made it Vitalik's most valuable asset, for now. See his holdings here.

Vitalik's Shiba wealth, larger than his ETH holdings.

While I could never recommend this on any serious level, mostly because I imagine both Shiba and Dogecoin will come crashing down 10x faster than their rise.  I will say - it's a fun coin to own, and for the last few days waking up to see actual profits has me starting my day a laugh.

At less then a penny $25 will make you a Shiba millionaire  t the time of writing it's trading at $0.0000019.  I got in at $0.00000002, and became a Shiba billionaire, joining the rest of the token holders in daily wishes of 'please let this become worth 1 cent'. 

SHIB trades exclusively on Uniswap. 

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Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk / Breaking Crypto News