In this article, I look at what it would take for Dogecoin to reach $1. First I will give you the context you need to understand DOGE. Then I will look at DOGE’s market performance and compare Dogecoin’s market cap to that of other major cryptocurrencies. Subsequently, I will examine the factors influencing Dogecoin’s price and outline the necessary preconditions to achieve the $1 mark. I’ll wrap it with a prediction for Dogecoin.
Ready? Let’s dive into it.
How Dogecoin came about
Once upon a time, in the surreal world of internet memes and crypto, two wacky developers, Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus decided to create a joke cryptocurrency.
So they took the source code of a coin called Luckycoin which was a fork of Junkcoin, which was a fork of Litecoin which was a fork of Bitcoin. And then they adjusted the code to their liking.
What they ended up with was a blockchain that uses a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism and has the largest supply of coins that any blockchain had ever issued with 100Bn coins. They called the coin Dogecoin, based on a popular meme featuring a beloved Shiba Inu dog as its mascot.
Fast forward to today, and Dogecoin has cemented its place in the cryptocurrency market, thanks in part to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and billionaire Mark Cuban’s occasional tweets and endorsements.
If you want to buy Dogecoin check out my related article:
How to buy Dogecoin
Dogecoin’s market performance
During its first 3 years, nothing much happened with Dogecoin. But then in 2017, the ICO craze kicked in.
By then there were many Bitcoin and Ethereum millionaires touting their Lamborghinis and extravagant lifestyles on social media.
Wow!
What if you had bought Bitcoin at 1 cent? Bitcoin had already grown 20 times within the span of a year.
What if you caught the next Bitcoin? And this is when anyone and everyone started buying whatever coin came out.
As a result Dogecoin also picked up in price. From $0.0024 in May 2017, DOGE reached a peak of $0.011 in January 2018, a nice 4.5x.
Had you invested $1,000 in the early days when DOGE was $0.00028 you would now have $39,285.
However, shortly after, the ICO bubble crashed and the price of DOGE shot back down to $0.002. It stayed there for the next 3 years.
But then in January 2021, something strange happened. Something no one expected.
Dogecoin gets a CEO.
It’s at around this time that Elon Musk picked up on the meme coin and started tweeting in favor of it. Musk’s tweets rallied the crowds and people started buying DOGE in a frenzy.
At some point, the Dogecoin community appointed Elon Musk as their non-official CEO. If this went above your head it is a joke. Blockchains are by their nature decentralized and hence can’t have a CEO.
In October 2021, the price of DOGE reached an all-time high of $0.74 after Elon participated in Saturday Night Live and promoted the coin.
Since then the value of Dogecoin has tumbled back down to less than a cent. It saw a brief respite when Elon acquired Twitter because people thought Elon might introduce DOGE as a payment method within Twitter. But that ended up not happening and DOGE was unable to break from the broader market downturn in stocks and crypto.
Most recently DOGE’s price shot up 30% to just under a cent after Twitter changed its logo and replaced the Twitter bird logo with the Shiba Inu logo. But the price came back down shortly after the image was reverted.
Dogecoin market cap
Dogecoin’s market capitalization has been hovering in the $10-12 Billion dollar range over the past few months. That puts it fair and square in the top 10 crypto coins by market cap. Cardano, which many in the crypto community accuse of being overvalued, is also in the same range only slightly higher.
Then you have XRP which has about twice the market cap of Dogecoin.
A much larger distance away is Ethereum with a market cap of $231B.
Finally, Bitcoin with a market cap of $543B is about 50 times larger than Dogecoin.
Price of DOGE if it reaches the market cap of major coins
| Market Cap | Price of DOGE | |
| BTC | $534,268,011,529 | $3.84 |
| ETH | $224,964,352,686 | $1.62 |
| USDT | $81,467,991,046 | $0.59 |
| BNB | $51,549,727,199 | $0.37 |
| USDC | $30,786,672,158 | $0.22 |
| XRP | $24,342,590,768 | $0.18 |
| ADA | $13,684,279,987 | $0.10 |
| DOGE | $11,140,114,184 | $0.08 (current price) |
A simplistic analogy would be to say that if DOGE were to reach half of Ethereum’s market cap then the price would hit $1.
But that would be naive to do without looking at the factors that affect DOGE’s price. So let’s take a closer look at those.
Factors Influencing Dogecoin’s Price
1. Elon Musk and celebrity endorsements
What Elon does and says about DOGE has a massive influence on DOGE’s price. Elon’s support is a necessary precondition in order for Dogecoin to see $1.
Apart from Elon you also have other celebrities such as Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg who promote the coin.
2. Macro-economics
Crypto is considered a risk-on asset. While crypto holders and especially bitcoin holders were trying to propagate a narrative that crypto is money 2.0 that narrative broke down as soon as the economy took a turn. If people believed in the crypto narrative they should have shifted their lifetime holdings into crypto. However, we didn’t see that happening. Instead, we observe a very strong correlation between stock markets and crypto. If the stock market drops crypto drops and if the stock market rises then crypto rises.
Dogecoin in turn rises and drops in accordance with what is happening in the market.
So a second necessary precondition for DOGE to reach $1 is that the stock market and crypto overall need to be in a bull run.
3. Community and market sentiment
People talk about Dogecoin having a strong and fun community. From the discussions online there seem to be people who portray themselves as owning Dogecoin for the fun of it rather than speculation.
The Dogecoin community has raised money for various good causes from funding the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team to sponsoring NASCAR driver Josh Wise.
The most important aspect is that this community grew spontaneously. There were no large VCs funding marketing campaigns to grow the community like with Ape Coin for example. Instead, the community grew on its own.
Hence, a necessary condition for DOGE to reach 1 is for the community to keep growing and not lose momentum.
4. Inflation and an unlimited supply
Dogecoin adds 5.26B DOGE to its supply every year. DOGE’s current supply is 138B so this translates to 3.6% inflation per year.
Inflation has a dilutive effect on holdings so if DOGE were to reach $1 it would need to happen sooner rather than later.
Alternatively, the community would need to agree on a supply limit (for more on this read will Dogecoin ever be capped) or burning some coins.
5. Proof-of-work
Dogecoin is a Proof-of-work blockchain like Bitcoin. This means that Dogecoin rewards miners who add a new block to the Dogecoin network with 10,000 DOGE per block. These rewards are funded by the inflation I described above. However, to become a miner you need to purchase some expensive mining machines and a container to house them.
Because Dogecoin is a PoW blockchain there is no way to stake DOGE to earn a yield. For example, with Ethereum, I can earn a yield of 4% while Ethereum inflation is less than 1%.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is also a key supporter of Dogecoin. In the past, he has advocated that Dogecoin switches to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
If this were to happen then Dogecoin would increase in price as it would become more attractive to hold DOGE.
6. Acceptance as a payment method
Dogecoin is starting to become accepted as a payment method. By some estimates, as many as 1400 retailers accept DOGE as payment. The most famous of these are the Dallas Mavericks, owned by tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the Tesla and SpaceX merch stores, and hosting providers such as NameCheap. The key reason these stores offer DOGE as a payment method is as a marketing tool to appeal to Gen-Z who have an affinity for DOGE. However, there are no major retailers such as clothing brands or luxury brands that accept DOGE yet. If you want check out the top 50 businesses that accept Dogecoin as payment.
Where is Dogecoin accepted?
7. Availability to buy
Dogecoin is available to buy on all crypto exchanges.
The largest holder of DOGE however is not a crypto exchange but a brokerage firm.
Robinhood which is one of the most popular trading apps for Gen-Z is thought to have the largest amount of Dogecoin in the world. Other mainstream brokerages such as TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Cash App, offer some cryptocurrencies but don’t offer DOGE to their customers. Should any of these embrace DOGE it will be a bullish signal for DOGE as it will likely cause more purchases.
So What would it take for Dogecoin to reach $1
For DOGE to hit a dollar we would need a combination of the factors that influence its price to manifest during a bull market. So yeah the first precondition is that we enter a massive rally in the stock and crypto market like the one we experienced in 2021.
Are we in a bull market?
Recently there is an uptick in the market. The former CTO of Coinbase and major political analyst and crypto influencer Balaji Srinivasan has placed a $1M bet that the US dollar will hyperinflate over the next 2 months and that Bitcoin will reach $1M. This is boosting the price of BTC and in turn, altcoins such as Dogecoin are following suit.
In combination with the banks going bust and the Fed thought to be effectively printing more money to support insolvent banks the stock market and crypto markets are rising. However, many analysts expect that the stock market is going to crash in the next few months. Unless crypto decouples from stocks then you can expect crypto also crash.
But everything in life is a cycle. Once we exit the bear market we could see another stock market rally like the one that happened between 2008 and 2021 after the 2008 financial meltdown. If Dogecoin still has a community of believers that have held on to the coin then it will likely start to grow along with the rest of the market.
Necessary Ingredients for DOGE to Reach a Dollar
At this time Elon Musk or other celebrities would need to step in and make some bullish announcements to rally the crowds. For example, if Elon announces that he is launching a new payment mechanism within Twitter where you can pay in DOGE or that you can buy a TESLA with DOGE this would bolster DOGE’s price.
Simultaneously you would need more brokerages to start offering DOGE so that more retail investors start buying the digital currency. If at the same time, you have institutional investors starting to buy DOGE you then have a recipe for a massive rally.
Next, you would need some large retail brands to accept payment in DOGE. For example, if Amazon or Walmart or Walgreens etc were to announce they accept Dogecoin payment this could be a major price booster.
Finally, the price would be further bolstered if the community of Dogecoin developers was to agree on structural changes to the Dogecoin network such as lowering inflation or moving to Proof-of-Stake.
Dogecoin Price Prediction
Technical Analysis: Assessing Dogecoin’s Potential to Reach $1
In the short term, DOGE is highly unlikely to reach the 1 dollar mark. DOGE is currently trading at under a cent. For it to reach $1 it needs to grow 100 times.
- RSI (relative strength index) stands at 44.86, indicating a neutral position. This suggests that the market is neither overbought nor oversold, and no clear trend is visible at the moment.
- Stoch RSI (14) and Stochastic Fast (14) are showing values of 8.49 and 6.12, respectively, which signal a ‘Buy’ action. This means that the market has likely reached a short-term bottom, and there might be potential for an upward movement in the price.
- The Commodity Channel Index (20) is at -66.67, also suggesting a neutral stance. It implies that the market is in a consolidation phase, and no significant trend is being established.
- The Average Directional Index (14) is at 24.53, which is another neutral indicator. This suggests that there is no strong trend in the market currently.
- Awesome Oscillator (5, 34), Momentum (10), and MACD (12, 26) are all showing neutral values as well, indicating that the market is waiting for a clear direction.
- Williams Percent Range (14) is at -93.88, which signals a ‘Buy’ action. This indicator is implying that the market is currently oversold, and there could be a potential reversal in the price.
- The Ultimate Oscillator (7, 14, 28) is at 37.62, also in the neutral range. This means that no clear buying or selling pressure is present in the market.
- Both VWMA (10) and Hull Moving Average (9) are signaling ‘Sell’, suggesting that there might be a short-term bearish momentum in the market.
- Ichimoku Cloud B/L (9, 26, 52, 26) is at 0.09, which indicates a neutral position, suggesting that the market is in a consolidation phase.
In conclusion, based on the provided technical indicators, the Dogecoin market is currently in a neutral state, with some short-term bullish signals from Stoch RSI, Stochastic Fast, and Williams Percent Range
Dogecoin’s price forecasts from crypto experts
- Changelly predicts that DOGE will reach the $1 price point in May of 2029. According to them the highest possible price that DOGE can reach in 2023 is $0.079.
- Gov.capital only predicts up until 2028 when it expects DOGE’s price to reach a peak of $0.09.
- Coincodex shows that out of the 31 indicators they looked at 26 were bearish and only 5 were bullish. They do not go as far into the future to predict whether DOGE will hit 1 or not
- According to Wallet Investor Dogecoin is a bad long-term investment. They predict that DOGE will hover at less than a cent for the foreseeable future.
- DigitalCoin price forecasts that Dogecoin will hit $1 by January 2031. However, their technical analysis for the short term is bearish.
- Coinpriceforecast estimates that DOGE will never reach a dollar in the long term. Their prediction for 2033 has DOGE at $0.02.
Can Dogecoin reach $10?
Can Dogecoin reach $100?
Disclaimer
None of this is investment advice. Just because a website says that the price of Dogecoin is going to be x you shouldn’t just blindly follow that advice. Make sure you do your own research when investing and don’t invest your life savings into a coin that was originally intended as a joke.