Dogecoin Is Out Of Control

What's up, Steph? It's Graham here, and on July 20th, 2020, at 6:50 p.m., I bought 217,391 Dogecoin at a price of 0.0046 cents a piece for a total of a $1,000 investment.

Well, today, the time I'm making this video, that one thousand dollar investment has turned into eighty-nine thousand one hundred and thirty dollars and thirty-one cents. If I didn't sell it nine months ago, I'll be right back.

[Music]

All right, so now that I've washed away my tears, there's literally no way I can make a video today and not talk about the insanity that's Dogecoin. The cryptocurrency that was originally created as a joke has now popped into the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increasing in price 700% in the last week.

So obviously, now everyone wants to know, what is Dogecoin? Why did it start off as a joke? Why is it going up so much in price? How high could it go? Is this sustainable? And how could I dry all my wet clothes when I don't have a dryer yet in the house?

There's so much to talk about; there's so little time. But before we do that, I need to tell you about Brad. He jokingly said that he would smash the like button if I paid him five dollars. I mean, seriously, who does he think he is that I would actually pay him five dollars to hit the like button?

So I asked for his Venmo, I sent him five dollars, and he annihilated that like button as promised. That is how seriously I take the like button. So if you wouldn't mind destroying it for the YouTube algorithm, it would help me out a ton! Plus, my birthday is coming up on Thursday, so if you wouldn't mind just giving it a quick tap as an early birthday present, that would mean the world to me.

So thank you guys so much! With that said, let's begin.

All right, so before we talk about why this is pumping harder than Arnold Schwarzenegger at the gym, we gotta talk about exactly what Dogecoin is and how this has become one of the most brilliant concepts to introduce people to cryptocurrency. By the way, if you're already a crypto expert and you want to skip a bit of the background information, just go to this timestamp right here.

But I highly recommend you guys just watch it all the way through because you might end up learning something you didn't already know. So to start this off, when most people hear Dogecoin, usually the first thing that comes to mind is, "Wait a second, wasn't that created as a joke?"

The truth of that is yes, it was actually started off as a joke in 2013. Jackson Palmer, who is a product manager at Adobe, began making light of the whole cryptocurrency infatuation by tweeting about his own non-existent currency venture, Dogecoin. Back then, he had no intention of actually creating anything, but to his surprise, people began retweeting his posts and giving him positive feedback to start taking this joke a little bit more seriously.

So he said, one night after work, "I sat down with a beer, I had too much time on my hands, and I bought Dogecoin.com." Then I photoshopped the logo onto the coin and put it up there. Shortly after that, it was picked up on Reddit, where it caught the attention of the software developer Bill Marcus, who reached out for permission to actually build out Dogecoin into a fully functional currency.

Well, two weeks after the coin was launched in December of 2013, the price skyrocketed 300% through a combination of viral press and China forbidding the trading of Bitcoin. And from there, Dogecoin really took on a life of its own. It started off small, with users on Reddit being able to tip each other in Bitcoin, along with some mobile games allowing in-app purchases.

But what made this one so unique wasn't so much its functionality, but the fact that it was designed around a Doge meme. With the virality of meme culture in 2014, the trading volume of Dogecoin briefly surpassed every other cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin. The appeal was that it was just a light-hearted cryptocurrency. It wasn't meant to be taken too seriously; it wasn't intimidating, and it made people feel comfortable about immersing themselves in the entire world of cryptocurrency without the seriousness of everything else.

Now, since then, the following around Dogecoin has continued to grow. In 2018, Robinhood began allowing Dogecoin to be bought and sold for free on their platform, giving it significantly more exposure. It was even further popularized when Elon Musk began tweeting about it, causing the price to skyrocket within minutes. But now it's taken on a life of its own, and at the time of making this video, its market cap has surpassed 50 billion dollars, which is 500% higher than when I first talked about this two months ago.

So the first question we have to answer is, what happened and what's causing this? Well, usually, you would think that it was because Elon Musk tweeted about it on April 1st, saying that he was going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon. Yeah, of course, stuff like that certainly helps the price of Dogecoin, but that's not the entire story.

For the last two months, Dogecoin has really found its resting spot between five and seven cents, where it mainly trades back and forth on Robinhood. However, over the last week, the market of pretty much everything started going up. The stock market hit its all-time high, and alongside with it, Bitcoin and Ethereum started hitting their record highs as well. Generally, when that happens, other cryptocurrencies benefit from that type of exposure.

And Dogecoin was certainly a recipient of that as Dogecoin began increasing to 89 cents. Elon Musk, right on time, tweeted out a cryptic message: "To the moon," which many people interpreted as a bullish sign for Dogecoin, pushing the price even higher.

But then, on April 13th, there was a turning point from an old childhood snack that I have not eaten in well over a decade, and that would be Slim Jim! Yep, those little snacks that meat your parents used to put in your lunchbox have now become a small catalyst that helped push Dogecoin into orbit, increasing their market cap by billions of dollars. I'm not even joking; I couldn't even make this stuff up if I tried!

On April 13th, right before the meteoric rise of Dogecoin, they tweeted, "You're ready to go to the moon together? One week to go, we launch Doge Slim Jim on 4/20. Let's take doing only good every day higher. #Dojax #SlimJim rise and spread the word!"

Shortly after that, Kronos announced that they had purchased 600 million Dogecoin cash with plans to release a limited edition air purifier named Air Doge that could be bought with you guessed it, Dogecoin. On top of that, there was also the public listing of Coinbase, which opened at a 100 billion valuation, legitimizing the entire business of cryptocurrency to Wall Street and paving a very clear path that not only cryptocurrency is here to stay, but it's also going to be a very big driver of the markets in the future.

The Coinbase IPO really just gave a giant spotlight of exposure to all cryptocurrency in general, so it would make sense that Dogecoin would be benefiting from some of this enthusiasm. But now Dogecoin has become its own self-fulfilling prophecy. As the price goes higher, it gets more mainstream attention, and the more mainstream attention it gets, the higher the price goes, which means it gets more mainstream attention, which drives the price even higher.

In fact, demand was so strong that Robinhood suffered another outage and temporarily halted the trading of cryptocurrency on their platform until it was restored. Which, by the way, if you want to check out a free brokerage which doesn't route your order flow, feel free to check out Public down below in the description. And when you sign up using that link, they'll give you a free stock of your choice worth all the way up to $50.

Plus, I'm posting all of my stock trades on there, so if you want to check them out, let me know what you think! Okay, but back to Dogecoin. Now let's take a step back and talk about this from the perspective of an investment.

Because as fun as this is to watch and be a part of, I'm sure everyone just wants to know how high can this thing go? Well, that's something kind of difficult to answer because initially, it was never developed to be something that would have actual intrinsic value. It was created from the open-source software project Litecoin, which just means there's no limit to the number of coins which could be mined.

For example, with Bitcoin, there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoins in existence—and that's it! But with Dogecoin, 10,000 new coins are mined every single minute, meaning this is an inflationary currency that's designed to be worth less over time, with the hope that that would encourage people to actually go and use and spend it.

Even the founders who created Dogecoin in the first place are totally perplexed by its popularity. The co-founder, Jackson Palmer, left the Dogecoin team in 2015 and said in an interview with no media plans for development, "It looks like the coin will slowly become stagnant in the future." The circulating supply of Dogecoin is astronomical, which will deter the price of the cryptocurrency from rising any further.

The creators are also quoted as saying that they don't own any Dogecoin themselves. Although a while ago, Bill Marcus said he used all of his Dogecoin to go and buy a Honda Civic. As far as what he thinks about all of this, he said to The Wall Street Journal, "The idea of Dogecoin being worth 8 cents is the same as Gamestop being worth 325. It doesn't make sense. It's super absurd; the coin design was absurd."

Now, even though the creators are not as enthusiastic about it as Elon Musk is and it was never designed to be something that would actually be successful, you still have to go and ask yourself why is it then that everyone is piling into Dogecoin, using it in their marketing, sending it to the literal moon, and otherwise turning it from a joke into something that may very well be used as a legitimate currency one day? And also, why haven't you yet gotten your free stock worth all the way up to $50 down below in the description?

Well, I think part of its success was due to the fact that it was never trying to be anything in the first place. People felt comfortable using and adopting it because there was really no ulterior motive. It wasn't like the creators made this from an offshore shell company in the Cayman Islands while they secretly tried to pump it up and cash out from their mega yacht while sailing international waters.

It was just two normal guys goofing around trying to do something for fun without the intention of trying to turn this into a profit-making machine. Well, unknowingly, that created a cryptocurrency that people didn't find intimidating. And when it comes to cryptocurrency, one of the biggest factors out there that very few people talk about is trust.

If you don't have trust and faith that what you're buying into is legitimate, you're never gonna hold on to it. But Dogecoin doesn't have that problem. People like it because it's funny, it's less than 50 cents, they know what they're getting, and it's not scary for someone just entering the cryptocurrency world.

But then we have an element to this that wasn't so much expected. Because of its underground popularity and appeal, real mainstream companies began using its virality to begin marketing their products, and in the process of doing that, they further legitimized this as a currency to eventually be taken seriously.

Like, okay, Slim Jim incorporating Dogecoin within their marketing could be seen as a way to create relevance and show that they're in on the joke. But in the process, their success is going to incentivize other businesses to copy that as well, and that could end up leading to real mainstream adoption.

The same thing can also be said about the Air Doge purifier. To me, that's just a blatant marketing ploy, but I'll admit I like it. I don't even care if they're doing this as a publicity stunt; I think it's funny. And now I'm that much more likely to remember them as a brand because of it.

I think if other companies are smart about this, they would try to capitalize on this as well. They might be able to create the McDoge burger or maybe the Doge Frappuccino that you could go and buy with, of course, Dogecoin.

I think we could very well be at a tipping point here where, as they see marketing dollar signs, they end up legitimizing this as a currency that you could actually use. And to me, I gotta say that was a bit unexpected. I wouldn't even be surprised if Tesla one day begins accepting Dogecoin for their cars. I think it's just a matter of time at this point, given how much Elon Musk has talked about it.

I think there's also a chance that maybe one day Coinbase allows Dogecoin to be on their platform or maybe BlockFi finds a way to start giving you interest on your Dogecoin holdings. But all of that is just speculation, and even though it's fun to think about Tesla or Apple taking Dogecoin as payment, that hasn't happened yet, and it may never happen.

On a more serious note though, it's very clear that throughout the last year, the price of Dogecoin is not driven by any sort of fundamental analysis or real-world use case. But instead, the enthusiasm and excitement of an unsuspecting meme combined with the hope of one day making a whole bunch of money from it.

When you're buying Dogecoin, what you're really buying into is something that shouldn't be taken too seriously—that's just for fun—that people trust. And if it winds up being something in the future, then so be it. But I do have to mention a word of caution that just as quickly as it could go up, it can and will go back down. Just as people bought in Gamestop at 450 a share and subsequently lost 65% of their investment, people will lose money on Dogecoin if they don't know what they're doing.

So my advice is this: if you're currently holding on to Dogecoin, just go and ask yourself the question, "Would you buy Dogecoin at the price it's currently trading at?" If the answer to that is no, then the question becomes, why are you holding on to it?

Because essentially, you not selling is the same thing as you buying in at the price it's currently at. Ultimately, it really just comes down to this: you're either going to regret not holding onto it longer or not selling it sooner. Pick your choice.

If you sell it and it goes up, you'll wish you held on longer. But if you didn't sell it and it goes down, you'll miss out on guaranteed profit. So you'll have to decide that one for yourself. But I don't think there's any shame in taking some profits off the table if this is money you cannot afford to lose.

I've seen pumps like this so many times, and I gotta say, I don't think I've ever seen something rise like this that doesn't eventually fall back down at some point. And who knows, maybe it just keeps going up in price. But analyze the situation objectively without getting greedy and trying to inch out a little bit more profit, and hopefully that will end up helping you come to your own conclusion.

Now, as far as my own thoughts on this, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point Dogecoin begins to establish itself as an actual currency with real-world functionality as it grows in popularity. I think it's shown us that people are willing to take a meme very seriously if people have a genuine interest in it, and today that's certainly the case.

I made the argument a few months ago that if mass adoption begins to take place because of its popularity, then absolutely it'll continue going up in price. And so far, to my amazement, that's actually been the case. But it's still uncertain just how many companies are actually going to adopt it and give it functionality.

It's still a gamble, and if you're looking to invest, only invest an amount that you're comfortable with losing. I honestly think this will continue to get more and more mainstream attention. But in the bigger picture, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some rather large price drops along the way.

So if you're buying in, that is what you're signing up for. Investments like this are entirely dependent around attention, and on the internet, attention changes day by day. So even though it's doing really well right now when all the eyes are on Dogecoin, the real question becomes what happens when people move on and pay attention to something else instead?

I'm certainly excited to see how this plays out, but just remember, be careful, play it safe, and there's no shame in taking out some profits if you're up a lot of money.

But to end this one off on a positive note, the creators themselves did say that if all we've done with Dogecoin is grow awareness in a decentralized currency such as Bitcoin, then I think we've done a good job. Because for a lot of people who are using Doge now, it's their first cryptocurrency that they've ever used, and they've started mining, they're learning, and I think it's great that people actually want to learn about it because it's associated with the Doge meme.

So I'm thankful that there is a playful currency out there without an ulterior motive that gets people interested in learning more about cryptocurrency. And that combined with Coinbase going public is a sign that we're seeing a big shift in the way people define money and how we should never dismiss something just because it started off as a joke.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it! As always, make sure to destroy the like button, subscribe button, and notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily! So if you want to be a part of it, feel free to add me there as on my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show. I post there every single day.

I'm not posting here, so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. And lastly, if you guys want a completely free stock worth all the way up to 50 dollars down below in the description, feel free to use my link and sign up for Public.

They're completely free stock trading brokerage that doesn't route your order flow. Plus, they combine the social media aspects so I could post all of my stock trades on there. So if you want to be a part of it, use that link down below. Let me know which free stock you get!

Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!