The bull run of three years ago was a bizarre and captivating time to be involved in the cryptocurrency space. Those who were around for the first bull run punched the air with joy when Bitcoin passed $100—in fact, there’s a popular, viral video on YouTube of a man celebrating it hitting three figures back in 2013.
Back then, that was considered a bull run. Now that some of the world’s most prominent financial institutions drive billions into Bitcoin daily, we’re in an entirely different landscape. The cryptocurrency market is also in a much different shape than it was back in 2021 when Dogecoin was at the top of the agenda – but what are the chances of it revisiting these dizzying heights at some point over the next year or two?
The Rise of Dogecoin
Dogecoin’s price and trajectory are a great example of just how wild the 2021 bull run was. Several catalysts caused the price to climb toward nearly $0.75 per token. Still, like many cryptocurrency tokens, the real price action stemmed from people being able to use it on multiple platforms or for reasons outside of traditional cryptocurrency investments.
Due to Dogecoin’s relative equality in price compared with the US dollar, cryptocurrency casinos started to offer avenues for gamers who wanted to use crypto to play casino games. Although Bitcoin and Ethereum would see the most activity through blockchain gambling platforms, Dogecoin started attracting many casino gamers. In 2021, Dogecoin became one of the key cryptos for casino gamers looking to play slot games.
Although this enthusiasm has cooled, and crypto slots at Joe Fortune opt for more conventional and well-known tokens such as Litecoin and Ethereum for casino gamers looking to use their digital assets to place a bet – we can’t overlook how Dogecoin initially carried this momentum, and brought many new investors into the cryptocurrency space, both as investors and looking to use it in practical, actual use case environments such as casino slot gaming.
Elon Musk, Doge & The Twitter Phenonemon
We can’t discuss Dogecoin’s price action in 2021 without addressing the elephant in the room—the significant influence of one of the world’s most recognizable names and now the owner of Twitter (X), Elon Musk.
It wasn’t just the South African billionaires’ phenomenal online reach that caused the price to skyrocket. However, given that he was tweeting about it early on when the price was still way below $0.01, the price action was a lot more explosive than it would have been if he was tweeting about a conventional cryptocurrency asset like Bitcoin, which has a much larger market cap and requires more capital injection to move the price.
Musk has gone from a prominent figure on Twitter to the central figure of the company. Buoyed up by his newfound ownership following his eye-watering $44 billion takeover in October 2022, this again led to renewed optimism from diehard Doge enthusiasts that the original “Dogefather” might be eyeing up cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin as a form of payment on the platform, which boasts around 300 million active users.
Catalysts For Another Doge Bull Run
You’d be hard-pressed to find any crypto analysts or investors who believe it has the potential to reach the heights it did in 2021. Not only were there many mitigating factors in play, but the landscape of cryptocurrency is constantly evolving. With memecoins and tokens with no real use case, they rise and fall in a quick fashion.
Solana’s becoming increasingly evident as the new springboard for those looking to launch meme coins. Solana’s price has increased by more than 600% in less than a year – with the token now sitting in the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Due to the volume of memecoins knocking about and Solana becoming the new platform people use to launch and buy their own, it’s difficult to see how Dogecoin can recapture that narrative.
As was the case in 2021, it would have to be Elon-driven and colossal news. There are growing claims that X is looking to implement cryptocurrency payment systems, but the chances of Dogecoin being the main token of choice are slim. It’s far more likely to be a cryptocurrency with an actual use case and the backing of a big institution that will fit this bill. There’s also a potential avenue for Elon to launch his own token instead of incorporating an existing project, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it is unlikely to be Doge.
Final Thoughts
Stranger things have happened in cryptocurrency than Dogecoin recapturing the public imagination again. However, suppose we boil it down to the number of projects circulating and the sort of narratives driving price action. In that case, it does feel like Dogecoin is continuing to slowly lose that momentum.
It’s not totally out of the question that it would double from its current price range, but to revisit its all-time high, it would need to do a 5x – we’re far more likely to see other memecoins take centre stage this time around.
