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- Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency DOGE had a massive quarter in Q2 this year as it averaged almost $1 billion a day in trading volume.
- Dogecoin benefitted from shilling by Elon Musk and a host of other celebrities and new listings on exchanges such as Gemini and Coinbase.
Everyone’s favorite memecoin recorded massive growth in the second quarter of the year, new data now shows. Dogecoin became a crypto mainstay in Q2, and as data compiled by Coinbase now shows, the trading volume was there to back the hype. DOGE saw close to $1 billion in trades daily, boosted by shilling by Elon Musk and several other celebrities, a price surge that caught the eyes of millions of traders and listing on new exchanges such as Coinbase and eToro.
The data shows that Dogecoin averaged $995 million in the period between April and June. This was up from a mere $74 million a day in the first quarter of the year, representing a rise of 1,250 percent.
The data by Coinbase, which Business Insider had an exclusive look at, shows that Ethereum trading volume shot up by 53 percent quarter-on-quarter to average $3.25 billion daily. For Bitcoin, the narrative was different as it dropped by 14 percent to average $4 billion.
Elon Musk, new listings and price pumps push Dogecoin to new heights
For Dogecoin, the quarter saw one piece of good news come quickly after another. However, all else fades in comparison to what the Technoking of Tesla, Elon Musk, did for DOGE. The ‘Dogefather’ – as some fondly referred to him – shilled the crypto every opportunity he got, from his countless “DOGE to the moon” tweets to plugging it on his appearance at Saturday Night Live.
This attention by investors and coordinated efforts to pump the price via Reddit and other platforms saw the crypto pump by 18,000 percent between January and mid-May. DOGE started the year at a mere $0.004 but by May, it had hit over $0.70. At the time, its market cap was above $95 billion and it was at one time only behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, even bigger than companies like General Motors, BP, Uber and FedEx.
However, the overall market crash has caught up with the dog-themed crypto and it’s now trading at $0.178, a 75 percent drop from its May highs. Despite this, it’s still up by more than 4,400 percent since the start of the year.
While Elon Musk was critical in the rise of Dogecoin – he’s still shilling the memecoin – its listing on top exchanges was just as important. In Q2, American investors got the chance to bet on its success after market leader Coinbase and Winklevoss-led Gemini listed it. Elsewhere, top social trading platform eToro also listed the token, as did several other smaller exchanges.
Dogecoin has become such an important cryptocurrency for exchanges to have that Robinhood – which is primarily a stock trading app – cautioned that its income might be affected if Dogecoin’s popularity wanes. The memecoin accounted for 34 percent of the platform’s crypto transactions in Q1 and while the figures for Q2 have yet to be released, this percentage is expected to be much higher.
Read More: Robinhood warns in IPO filing that revenues could be affected by DOGE popularity
