• Elon Musk once again shills Dogecoin, calling it the “crypto of the people”.
  • Dogecoin pros and risks explained by CZ

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has been endlessly shilling Dogecoin (DOGE) on his Twitter page over the past fortnight leading to a magnanimous spike in the crypto’s price. This week on Thursday, Musk once again aggressively tweeted about the coin causing a 40% price spike in an hour. Despite DOGE being a “meme coin”, it has grown to become the 15th largest cryptocurrency with nearly $6 billion in market capitalization.

So what’s the deal with DOGE and why is Elon Musk so fascinated by the cryptocurrency?

Elon touts Dogecoin as “the crypto of the people”

Earlier in the week, Elon Musk explained to his Twitter followers that his tweets on Dogecoin are done in jest and are not meant to be taken seriously. However, the market seems to look at it differently as every tweet from the Tesla and SpaceX CEO on DOGE causes a rapid price increase.

Currently trading at $0.04612797, Dogecoin has pumped over 465% in the past two weeks due to Musk’s tweets and demand from WallStreetBets, a Reddit group with over 2 million followers.

Despite announcing he will be taking a break from Twitter earlier this week, Musk sent out a series of tweets shilling Dogecoin – spiking the price up by 50% in an hour.

Musk posted a picture from the Lion King, presenting himself as Rafiki and DOGE as Simba following up with four tweets praising Dogecoin.

Binance CEO Explains The Key Pros And Cons Of Dogecoin (DOGE)

However, it is not all rosy across the Dogecoin community following the appearance of the largest DOGE account which holds 27% of the total supply, or 34.9 billion DOGE. The account started off with 100 DOGE in February 2019 but has since been receiving millions of DOGE in the past two years. One spectator who followed the account keenly stated on BitcoinTalk,

“Personally I don't think it is all coincidence, but yes the evidence is by no means conclusive. Certainly a massive crypto whale of some sort. To own 20% of DOGE which has floated in the top 25-50 coins for years now, and doesn't have an organization, VC, or DAO behind it, is very notable.”

The issue was raised by Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao once again as DOGE price spiked off Elon Musk’s tweets. Listing the pros and cons of DOGE, CZ said the cryptocurrency is cool, fun, and ‘decentralized’ in the sense that they have no core development team and benefits from the PR stunts from Elon Musk.

However, he listed the risks of Dogecoin stating centralization as the main risk. Given one account holds 27% of the total supply and 50% of the supply is distributed across 20 addresses (some being exchanges and custodians) Dogecoin is “kinda centralized”, CZ wrote.