Dogecoin: Will it outgrow its reliance on Elon Musk to trigger growth

In a short span, Dogecoin (DOGE), the meme-based cryptocurrency, emerged as one of the best performing cryptocurrencies, recording massive year-to-date growth. While the jokes, memes and speculations around the coin continue, DOGE’s gains pushed it “to the moon.”

According to CoinGecko’s latest quarterly cryptocurrency report,

“In Q2, the market entered into a meme frenzy. Dogecoin (DOGE) led the pack with an impressive 366% gain.”

DOGE showed a significant peak, as seen below, surpassing even BTC. Meanwhile, Bitcoin suffered a loss of 40%.

Source: Coingecko

In addition to this, “Dogecoin trading volumes soared 1,250% in the second quarter of the year on the world’s major cryptocurrency exchanges,” according to figures compiled by Coinbase and published by Markets Insider. What’s more, the average trading volume of DOGE surged to $995 million per day from April to June, having traded around $74 million a day in the first quarter.

This rise doesn’t come as a total surprise mainly because of two crucial factors, Elon Musk’s Twitter “campaigns” as well as DOGE’s listings on major exchanges.

For instance, DOGE spiked more than 10% after the billionaire updated his Twitter picture to showcase his support for the eighth largest coin. This single action from the Tesla CEO saw the price of the meme-coin move from $0.18 to above $0.20 overnight.

Moreover, big exchanges such as Coinbase, eToro, and Gemini listed the token amid booming interests.

DOGE has been trending in the developmental aspect as well. Not so long ago, developer Patrick Lodder introduced two proposals, the first of which adds utility-based features akin to those included in other blockchains such as Bitcoin. The second proposal relating to transaction fees will reduce the average fee by 99%, among other things. Through these upgrades, Dogecoin will also incorporate the segregated witness (SegWit) feature.

With such initiative(s), DOGE could potentially succeed consistently, instead of relying on triggers, like support from Elon Musk or other celebrities.

On the contrary, DOGE has been recently suffering a major correction, to wipe out some of those gains it made earlier. At the press time, it was trading at the $0.17 mark with a setback of about 10% in the past 24 hours.