Altcoin
Why is Cardano open to ‘fixing’ Dogecoin’s ‘existential, ticking time bomb?’
Dogecoin and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have both been two of the crypto-market’s biggest highlights this year. While the former was once seen as merely a “meme-coin,” thanks to the latter’s tongue-in-cheek efforts to market the alt, the dog coin is now the sixth-largest cryptocurrency in the industry with a market cap of over $40 billion. This, despite DOGE failing to hold its early-May heights.
Suggesting that Dogecoin was “once seen as merely a meme-coin” is perhaps an exaggeration, however, especially since DOGE hasn’t been able to win over all the skeptics in the market yet. Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson is one of them, with the exec recently telling
Lex Fridman that he doesn’t “understand” the frenzy associated with DOGE.That being said, it’s worth noting that the IOHK CEO also realizes the impact of Musk’s Dogecoin endorsement. DOGE, according to him, “has become a large thing,” one that has emerged to become a reasonable target for somebody to fix it up. That is what the tech billionaire is attempting to do, with Musk, contrary to initial expectations, working on concerns like transactional efficiency and speed with a few DOGE devs.
It’s also worth highlighting that while the creator of Cardano did commend Musk for his ‘serious’ entry into the crypto-space, he did point out fundamental issues that Dogecoin needs to sort out before it can be seen as a serious, sustainable competitor to other cryptos in the market. DOGE’s monetary policy, for instance, is a big issue, especially since its unlimited supply cuts into the notion of scarcity and the narrative of its possible emergence as a store of value.
What’s more, DOGE is “predatorily distributed” too, with the top 90 DOGE addresses holding just less than 70% of the total supply. According to Hoskinson,
“They can sell at any price point and make a profit.”
This “existential, ticking time bomb” is what Dogecoin needs to take care of since retail investors will be the ones to get hurt when it goes off. Allowing that to happen, Hoskinson added, would ensure that the “Elizabeth Warrens of the world” step up in an effort to regulate the space more strictly.
Here, it’s worth noting that the exec’s views are in line with the ones he shared a while back. Last month, during one of his regular update sessions, Hoskinson had commented,
“At any time, a cascading failure can happen.”
In light of the above, there is perhaps a good reason why Hoskinson is now open to the idea of Dogecoin and Cardano working together. Interestingly, when in the past he was asked whether DOGE could be ported to Cardano, the exec had responded
with a quippy answer that highlighted his view of the dog coin.While Hoskinson had previously asked Musk to refer to a host of academic papers to “fix” Dogecoin, the fact that the creator of Cardano is more open to taking the initiative himself opens up a lot of possibilities.
“It would be a lot of fun. I’m not averse to the idea of cleaning up the codebase.”