The first meme-coin was born in 2013: Dogecoin (DOGE). This cryptocurrency is kind of an homage to the known meme Doge, which origins go as back as 2005. Then, years later, Jackson Palmer, a marketer for Adobe Systems, bought the Dogecoin.com domain for fun. He started like that what it would be a digital currency with over $7b in market capitalization.<\/p>\n
Now, we have a curious phenomenon around this cryptocurrency. Its price was boosted to new All-Time-Highs (ATHs) last February, and it wasn\u2019t due to something inherent in the coin itself. Dogecoin\u2019s system has its own blockchain similar to Litecoin, and this one hasn\u2019t changed a lot in a while.<\/p>\n
The reasons behind this sudden growth are partly fun and partly revenge. And the consequential adoption because of it.<\/p>\n
In case you don\u2019t know it already, there is a subreddit dubbed \u201cWallStreetBets\u201d (WSB), where users worldwide meet to share experiences about the stock market. And to defy the entire financial system by joining forces to sabotage Wall Street, it seems.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s check. GameStop (GME)<\/a> is an American company that sells videogames and related products, physically. With the rise of online game platforms (Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, etc.) and the COVID-19 pandemic, they didn\u2019t bear very well. They\u2019ve been suffering millionaire financial losses and they\u2019ve closed thousands of its stores worldwide.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why, in the stock exchanges, the bigger investors (which mean investment companies) have been betting for its failure and making profits with such bets. They borrowed (and sold) GME stocks at the beginning of January, and they were expecting them to decrease by the end to make profits from it. The disappointment and alarm were large when the stocks didn\u2019t decrease but skyrocketed out of a sudden.<\/p>\n From $17.25, these stocks reached $325+ per unit. That meant a 1,784%+ increase and millionaire losses for the short-selling investors. All this because of a group of Redditors from WSB. They literally plotted to buy GME stocks massively to pump its price and, more than likely, sabotage on purpose the bigger hedge funds.<\/p>\n The reasons for this would be, more than looking for profits, sheer revenge. The bigger hedge funds are widely blamed for the financial crisis in 2008 because they caused an awful mortgage bubble that left homeless millions of people.<\/p>\n A lot of people and even some celebrities joined the Gamestop frenzy because that was only the beginning. At some point, somebody dubbed \u201cWSBChairman\u201d on Twitter wondered if Dogecoin has ever reached the dollar. And it was a nice boost for the price of this crypto. Soon, even Elon Musk joined the party with more tweets and a purchase for his son.<\/p>\n Bought some Dogecoin for lil X, so he can be a toddler hodler<\/p>\n — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n