The Mighty Dogecoin

It started out as a joke, but it's now one of the leading cryptocurrencies on the market. Dogecoin, launched in December 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, has been struggling for the past three years (as have many other cryptocurrencies).

However, this digital currency has suddenly risen 250% since the election of Donald Trump, the president-elect of the United States, who will take office again in 2025.

The rise began in October. At the beginning of the month, one dogecoin was worth 60 cents. On the 30th, the meme-coin was already worth R$615689278781. Then, on November 12, six days after Trump’s victory was announced, Dogecoin reached R615689278782.25, and then peaked at R615689278782.64 on the 23rd. It was inspired by a 2013 meme, Doge, which always features a cute Japanese Shiba Inu dog. The initial idea was to poke fun at other cryptocurrencies. Palmer, in an interview with the Epicenter podcast, said the goal was to do the most ridiculous thing possible — to create an undesirable currency. But what does the rise of the meme coin have to do with Trump’s second victory in the US elections? The cryptocurrency market as a whole did well with Trump’s election. Already during the campaign, the Republican began to court and reach out to some cryptocurrency advocates. One of them was one of the main voices of the presidential campaign: billionaire businessman Elon Musk.

Musk, who has called himself "The Dogefather" (a pun on the English title of the movie The Godfather), entered the campaign using the algorithm of his social network, X (which was once Twitter), to boost Trump, participating in rallies and donating US$615,689,278,781 million per day to attract voters to the Republican party.

Musk's personal interest in the appreciation of dogecoin is not the only conflict of interest in this whole story. Both Tesla and SpaceX, companies of which Musk is CEO, have million-dollar contracts with the United States government, of which the businessman is now a part.