Dogecoin Remains The Riskiest Cryptocurrency To Invest In

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What more can be said about cryptocurrency Dogecoin (CCC:USD-DOGE)?

Dogecoin coins with doge faces peeking out of brown leather wallet. The coins have the words "wow much coin how money" embossed on them.
Source: shutterstock.com/Igor Igorevich

After having a moment in the sun this spring, the digital coin that was started in 2013 as a joke has seen its price fall sharply. After peaking at $0.72 on May 7, the price of Dogecoin has fallen 68% and now sits at $0.23. The cryptocurrency has a long way to go to reach the $1 mark that Dogecoin fans had been hoping to reach during the frenzied trading that took place a few months ago. With the broader cryptocurrency market slumping and regulators cracking down on digital tokens, investors have to ask if there’s any future for Dogecoin, which has no functional purpose and is simply a coin with a picture of a Shiba Inu dog on it?

Holding Out Hope

While serious cryptocurrency investors remain largely dismissive of DOGE stock and choose to focus instead on larger digital assets that have an actual purpose such as Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) and Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD), there remains a cohort of people who are holding out hope that Dogecoin will find some utility and prove to be more than a bad joke. Case in point: German travel booking site “GetYourGuide.” The company announced its expansion into the U.S. market by stating that it now accepts Dogecoin as a legitimate form of payment.

Americans can book vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas and Miami using DOGE that is processed via BitPay. Of course, GetYourGuide also accepts major credit and debit cards as payment. While GetYourGuide’s acceptance of DOGE can be seen as a publicity stunt to generate news coverage as it entered the U.S., the German travel booking company is not the only one to recognize the digital coin. The Oakland A’s professional baseball team raised eyebrows when they announced in May that they will take DOGE as payment for tickets to the team’s home games.

An online petition calling on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) to accept Dogecoin as payment has secured nearly 150,000 signatures to date.

Baby Dogecoin

As the hype surrounding Dogecoin appears to be fading, a new cryptocurrency called “Baby Dogecoin” has popped up. Based on Dogecoin, “Baby Doge” as it is popularly known is a joke of a joke. A digital coin that is more useless than the cryptocurrency it is based on. Yet this hasn’t stopped the internet from creating a lot of buzz around Baby Dogecoin.  It recently rose 80% after Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) co-founder Elon Musk, who also championed Dogecoin earlier this year, Tweeted about Baby Doge.

Currently, Baby Doge is worth less than one cent. Its price now sits at $0.000000003054. Elon Musk, who has referred to himself as the “Dogefather,” has been able to move the price of Dogecoin with his online comments about the digital asset and Baby Dogecoin. Fans of Baby Doge, which debuted on June 1 of this year, claim that it offers faster transaction speeds and is a “yield-farming token,” which means that the more people transact in it, the more money is added to their digital wallet. How that translates into real world applications remains to be seen.

Continue To Avoid DOGE (And Baby Doge)

Nothing significant has changed with Dogecoin and the emergence of Baby Dogecoin raises more questions than it answers. As such, investors should continue to avoid the digital token that was started as a laugh by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. With several more legitimate cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum available for investors to purchase, there is no real reason to risk money on Dogecoin. Keep in mind that the Dogefather himself acknowledged on Saturday Night Live that Dogecoin is nothing more than a “hustle.” Stay far away.

Disclosure: On the date of publication, Joel Baglole did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Joel Baglole has been a business journalist for 20 years. He spent five years as a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and has also written for The Washington Post and Toronto Star newspapers, as well as financial websites such as The Motley Fool and Investopedia.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2021/07/dogecoin-remains-the-riskiest-cryptocurrency-to-invest-in/.

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