Aug 26, 2021

Since the beginning of April, the popularity of the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin (named after a meme of the Japanese dog breed Shiba Inu) has been rising among Indians. According to the Google search trends, there were more searches for the term Dogecoin on Google than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Ignoring standard wisdom, thousands of youngsters and millennials have favored meme coins rather than more stable and fundamentally robust altcoins like Matic, which is a solely Indian cryptocurrency. The showcase of such interest in Dogecoin can be seen mainly because of the Tesla Founder’s comment on a popular US comedy show. Indian youngsters and millennials are fans of Elon Musk, this has led to the increasing interest in Dogecoin. Also, Musk’s tweet on sending Dogecoin to the Moon added to the heed by youngsters in this meme coin, Dogecoin. Easy access to trading platforms, lack of expertise of the crypto technology, and endorsement of Dogecoin by famous personalities like Elon Musk have elevated the popularity of the meme coin. Musk’s Twitter handle is very popular and has been controversial. Even he himself had said that Dogecoin was just a meme coin. But later when he started making serious comments about Dogecoin becoming the currency of the future and that there are huge possibilities in Dogecoin, youngsters felt that it must be good as it is being tweeted by Elon Musk. Such interest in Dogecoin effectively broke the structure of the cryptocurrency market, as several cryptocurrency exchanges in India such as WazirX became impotent to manage the deluge of orders.