One month ago today, Dogecoin was cooling off an all-time high of 0.683135 as the world anticipated "the Dogefather" Elon Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live. Among the discussions at the time was why the alt-coin wasn't supported on the COINBASE exchange. As Musk delivered the traditional opening monologue and his mother jokingly asked if she would be receiving some Dogecoin for Mother's Day, I watched as the price plunged. In fact, the once joke alt-coin has fallen 48.6% from its level at the time of the SNL episode.
It's funny looking back now that people were calling for an episode of the late night show to be a catalyst. Clearly, it was a "sell the news" type of event. Regardless, Coinbase heeded the demand for Doge. In fact, as part of the company's Q1 2021 earnings call, they took questions from shareholders. The first question posed: "when will users be able to trade Doge?" CEO Brian Armstrong answered:
We plan to list Doge in the next six to eight weeks. And then more broadly, we're going to be focused on how we can accelerate asset addition in the future.
Accelerate they did indeed. In fact, in just over three weeks time, Doge has become tradeable on Coinbase. What's more is the crypto exchange has incentivized the launch with a sweepstakes. One lucky winner will receive $300k, 10 winners get 30k, and 6000 will win $100. That's payable in Dogecoin, of course.
To me, this is an amazing and unprecedented move by Coinbase. In a day and age when the "gameification" debate regarding markets is hotter than ever, this contest is capitalizing on that. After all, in order to enter the drawing, you must first opt-in and then buy or sell $100 worth of Doge. It really is genius - this especially seems to appeal to the young meme traders who dominate the market, at least the message boards anyway. All in all, a brilliant marketing move, perhaps seeking to win over the "crypto curious" - those who haven't yet entered the market. While Coinbase may have missed the initial "FOMO run" on Doge, they've opened the door to whatever future the alt-coin has.
In my view, clearly the "excess phase" has passed. But the long-term trend appears to be intact for now. While you may not be able to spend your Doge on Amazon yet, Newegg is accepting Doge and other cryptocurrencies via BitPay as of April 2021. I'll wait and see how the utility of Dogecoin expands. In the meantime, I'm entering the Coinbase Doge sweepstakes. Why not? Sometimes you just have to remember "sir, this is a casino."
