Dogecoin surges to record high, up almost 300% in a week

The Dogecoin cryptocurrency surged more than 90% to a record high on Friday, putting its gain for the week at almost 300%.

The latest rally in Dogecoin came two days after billionaire Elon Musk tweeted, “Doge Barking at the Moon”, accompanied by an image of Spanish artist Joan Miró’s painting, “Dog Barking at the Moon.”

The Tesla chief executive has previously tweeted about Dogecoin, which is based on a popular internet meme. On Feb. 4, Dogecoin surged over 60% after Musk tweeted about it.

It last traded at about 34 cents after reaching as high as 45 cents, according to data on blockchain and cryptocurrency website Coindesk. So far in 2021, Dogecoin has surged over 7,000.

Dogecoin was created largely as a satirical critique of the 2013 crypto frenzy, and it can be bought and sold on digital currency exchanges.

What is Dogecoin?

According to CNBC, the digital token was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a faster but “fun” alternative to Bitcoin. It was started as a satire on the numerous fraud crypto coins that had sprung up at the time, and takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was viral several years ago.

Unlike Bitcoins, whose maximum possible number is fixed at 21 million (a figure that is estimated to be reached by 2040), Dogecoin numbers do not have an upper limit, and there are already more than 100 billion in existence.

When the crypto coin first took off, the online community that was backing it invited attention by supporting unconventional causes, such as sponsoring Jamaica’s bobsled team at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Also that year, the Dogecoin community gave $55,000 worth of the digital token to a Nascar driver in the US.