In 2024, the price of Dogecoin soared to a three-year high due to optimistic remarks and actions from Trump and Musk. Let's take a look at what happened.
With the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency market in 2024, Dogecoin holders have decided to send this meme coin, valued in millions of dollars, to the moon.
If recent events are any indication, this coin, often watched by billionaire Elon Musk, seems to be moving towards this goal.
In 2024, Dogecoin experienced a glorious year, not only reaching its highest price in three years but also becoming a token for external initiatives of the US government, and even giving rise to new exchange-traded products.
Despite facing some technical issues recently, this Shiba Inu-inspired token still welcomed the new year with strong momentum.
Overall, Dogecoin in 2024 can be described as quite exciting.
Musk and Trump drove up the price of DOGE.
Due to Trump's election as president and the support from him and Musk, Dogecoin skyrocketed to its highest point in three years at $0.48 in early December.
It reached an all-time high of $0.73 in May 2021, and then hovered at a low for the next few years until it recently saw a resurgence.
A few months ago, Trump, the self-proclaimed 'cryptocurrency champion,' kicked off his campaign to reclaim the White House, which also propelled the price of Dogecoin to skyrocket. His victory on election day not only sparked enthusiasm across the entire cryptocurrency market but also benefited meme coins, including Dogecoin.
Meanwhile, Musk posted a series of proposals about digital currencies and cutting government spending on X (formerly Twitter), causing the token's price to rise multiple times.
Musk and Ramaswamy will lead the DOGE initiative.
Shortly after election day, Trump announced that Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy would co-lead a US government external department named after Dogecoin—The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The goal of this department is to cut US government spending and reduce the federal budget deficit. A few weeks before the official announcement, Musk had already hinted at this news, exciting Dogecoin holders.
Musk stated on X in November: 'We will also set up a leaderboard to select the most ridiculous taxpayer spending behaviors, both extremely tragic and extremely funny.'
When Musk shared this plan in October, the price of Dogecoin also surged significantly. Although Dogecoin's name clearly comes from Musk's favorite meme coin, and the department's name cleverly matches Dogecoin's stock code, the plan itself does not actually involve cryptocurrency.
Dogecoin encounters technical issues.
However, Dogecoin also faced some technical issues. Earlier this month, the Dogecoin network encountered an unexpected obstacle. Reports indicated that blockchain developers caused about 70% of public nodes to crash.
Andreas Kohl stated in a post on X on December 11 that he had shut down hundreds of public nodes allegedly supporting the Dogecoin network and exploited the 'Death Note' vulnerability in the blockchain code using an old laptop from El Salvador.
The software engineer Tobias Ruck, who helped discover the vulnerability, explained that the 'Death Note' vulnerability allows individuals to exploit segmentation faults to crash nodes.
However, the Dogecoin Foundation later denied Kohl's claims, stating that his comments were inaccurate and emphasized that more than 1,000 Dogecoin nodes were unaffected during the so-called attack. The foundation also pointed out that the entire network successfully withstood this attack attempt.
Nevertheless, these conflicting statements have sparked considerable controversy in the Dogecoin community. Some community members believe that this vulnerability exposed potential security risks in the Dogecoin network.
Kohl posted on X: 'Anyone can easily crash the entire Dogecoin network.' However, the Dogecoin Foundation responded that these concerns were an overreaction and stated that the network remains safe and stable.
Timothy Stebbing, director of the Dogecoin Foundation, told Decrypt that the so-called vulnerability was not as serious as reported. He stated that the vulnerability was fixed in early December, and node operators have begun gradually updating their devices to ensure they are no longer affected by it.
Stebbing also mentioned that there are many privately operated nodes on the Dogecoin blockchain, which are harder to detect and destroy than public nodes that might be affected in an attack.
Dogecoin ETF—potentially achievable.
Additionally, analysts told Decrypt that with the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs earlier this year in the United States, there is also a possibility that a Dogecoin-based ETF could be launched in the US and opened to investors in the future. This means that Dogecoin may be able to leverage this trend to further expand its market influence.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas told Decrypt in November: "The ETF industry has a characteristic of 'throwing spaghetti at the wall'; they try various different things, and I think we are likely to see multiple attempts, including Dogecoin."
As for whether this Dogecoin ETF can be approved next year, it remains undecided. However, some issuers are already considering incorporating Dogecoin into their future exchange-traded products. According to a blog post published last October, Grayscale has been considering including Dogecoin in its future cryptocurrency ETF products.
Additionally, Valour, a subsidiary of the Canadian cryptocurrency company DeFi Technologies, launched the Valour Dogecoin (DOGE) SEK ETP in Sweden this November, marking the first exchange-traded product offering Dogecoin (this meme coin) in the region.
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