Meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin fell Tuesday (April 20) after it hit an all-time high in a wild session in which followers of the token, once considered a parody, used hashtags to fuel a rally until it lost steam .

Dogecoin eventually fell 15.4 percent to $ 0.33 (S $ 0.44), but during the session when it hit a record high, its market cap surged to over $ 50 billion.

After the slump, market capitalization fell by around $ 45 billion, according to coinmarketcap.com.

By comparison, the hugely popular Bitcoin has a market capitalization of more than $ 1 trillion.

Dogecoin fans used the hashtags #DogeDay and # DogeDay420 to post memes, messages and videos on Twitter, Reddit and TikTok.

“GIMME THAT DOGECOIN LAMBO !!! #DogeDay” tweeted one, referring to the Lamborghini sports car popular in crypto culture.

With a price increase of 8,000 percent this year, Dogecoin, which was launched as a satirical criticism of the cryptocurrency frenzy of 2013, has overtaken widespread cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Tether for short and has become the sixth largest coin.

“The current passion for retail is unlikely to give up Dogecoin entirely,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at online forex trading platform OANDA, but he expected the “sell the event” response for the cryptocurrency.

The Dogecoin logo shows a Shiba Inu dog in the center of the meme. It can be traded on crypto exchanges and more popular mainstream trading apps.

“The Doge rally represents an interesting convergence,” said Diana Biggs, CEO of crypto start-up Valor, after the price of Dogecoin rose more than five-fold to a record $ 0.42 last week, according to CoinMarketCap was.

“A meme coin designed as a joke for early crypto adopters whose community found these things fun. Now there is a new generation of retail investors to whom memes are a native language,” added Biggs.

Online trade

The rise of Dogecoin resulted in a surge in online stocks and crypto trading by retail investors stuck at home with extra cash due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The coin has not increased much in use for payments or in commerce.

A boom in the use of online trading apps like Robinhood also fueled GameStop Corp’s (GME.N) stock’s social media rally this year, which saw retail investors battle hedge funds.

“It’s an extension of the same phenomenon that caused Tesla stock to be valued well beyond fundamentals and, more recently, the GME (GameStop) short squeeze,” said Ajit Tripathi, director of institutional business, decentralized finance -Startup Aave.

As with other cryptocurrencies, the price of Dogecoin is heavily influenced by social media users, including Tesla boss Elon Musk, whose tweets about the cryptocurrency caused the price to rise by over 60 percent in February.

According to betting aggregators US-Bookies.com, Dogecoin currently has an implied 16.7 percent probability of being worth more than $ 1 by the end of 2021. This is a significant improvement over earlier this month when it only had a 2.9 percent chance of doing so.

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