Dogecoin has soared nearly 130 times this year! It has risen by more than 9% and its market value is nearly 80 billion US dollars

As of press time, the price of Dogecoin has risen to around 61 cents, up 9.3%, with a market value of $79.5 billion. Earlier on Tuesday, the price of Dogecoin exceeded 50 cents for the first time. So far this year, the price of Dogecoin has risen by nearly 13,000%.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is scheduled to give an interview this Saturday, and if he talks about Dogecoin in the interview, it may further increase investor demand for the cryptocurrency. One analyst said that cryptocurrency traders may rush to buy the digital currency because they don’t want to miss out on any gains that Musk’s comments may bring to the price of Dogecoin.

Dogecoin began as a joke in 2013, when the cryptocurrency craze was still in its infancy and various digital currencies flooded the market. Now, eight years later, Dogecoin has regained popularity, apparently thanks to the attention of billionaires such as Musk and Mark Cuban, and because investors can easily invest in it through the free trading app Robinhood (commonly known as "Robinhood" in China).

"I'm not going to be on the long side," Michael Novogratz of cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital said in an interview. "I'm worried that once the enthusiasm fades, there will be no developers and no institutions will enter the market."

"When you think about the whole theory of this cryptocurrency revolution, what Dogecoin does is very pure," Novogratz said. "It's kind of like a middle finger to the system, and people are unhappy with the current financial system."

Novogratz reiterated his concerns about the sustainability of Dogecoin's gains, arguing that the cryptocurrency lacks the complexity of Bitcoin. But the billionaire investor also said of Dogecoin: "Shorting is very dangerous, that's all I can tell you."

Billionaire entrepreneur Cuban has also been full of praise for Dogecoin, recently saying on social media that the meme-based cryptocurrency could mature into a "usable currency." Prior to this, Cuban's NBA Dallas Mavericks team had already accepted Dogecoin as a payment method.

Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused financial services firm, released a research report on Dogecoin earlier this week, in which he called it "the most honest shitcoin."

"For young millennials and Gen Z, (Dogecoin) is simply a store of value," Novogratz said in an interview on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, New York-based Galaxy Digital announced it was acquiring San Francisco-based BitGo in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $1.2 billion, a deal Novogratz described as "a marriage of the West Coast and the East Coast, a marriage of technology and finance."

“With this acquisition, we become the second largest cryptocurrency custodian after Coinbase, with $42 billion in assets under management,” Novogratz said. He added: “We will transform from a company that invests in blockchain infrastructure to a company that builds blockchain infrastructure, which is the most exciting thing.”

According to data provided by cryptocurrency company Coinbase, Dogecoin's current market value has reached $87 billion. On paper, this figure is higher than the market value of Coinbase, which is now a public company, which is about $56 billion.

At the beginning of this year, the price of Dogecoin was only a few cents. Investors' speculative craze for this cryptocurrency began in late January, almost at the same time when retail investors on the Reddit forum pushed GameStop (NYSE: GEM, commonly known as "GameStop" in China) stock price soared.

At the same time, the surge in Dogecoin prices does not seem to have spread to cryptocurrencies with larger market capitalizations. As of press time, Bitcoin prices rose slightly, while Ethereum prices fell 4%. (Nebula)