Who let the doge out? Musk, Musk! Once a meme, “Dogecoin” is now worth more than Ford Motor Co.

Dogecoin’s rise from a trending meme into a widely traded asset worth over $50 billion, more than Marriott International Inc. or Ford Motor Co. has helped it gain mainstream status. A cryptocurrency that was created as a joke and was promoted heavily also as a joke by Elon Musk exploded into plain view on Wall Street on Monday, with a surge in dogecoin sending its 2021 return above 8,100% — more than double the gains on the S&P 500, including dividends, since 1988.

On February 4, Dogecoin surged over 60% after Musk tweeted about it. He tweeted about it recently again, causing another surge.

The cryptocurrency’s rise is reminiscent of GameStop Corp.’s stunning advance earlier this year, an episode in which traders congregating on Reddit and other social-media platforms made a past-prime mall retailer into a stock-market superpower.

This time, dogecoin’s buyers have gone a step further, turning what was meant as a parody into a real asset, providing some traders who piled in early with unimaginable gains. The latest stage of the frenzy centers on Tuesday having been deemed “Doge Day” in online forums, a loosely organized bid to push the price of the cryptocurrency to $1, from a 5 p.m. ET closing price of about 38 cents on Monday and less than a penny in January.

For now, dogecoin’s sharp rise is vindicating one of the strange but true facts of 2021: The most unconventional trades can sometimes yield outsize gains. Someone who invested $10,000 in dogecoin on Dec. 31 would have amassed more than $821,000 as of Monday, according to data from Kraken.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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