Thanks to Elon Musk’s numerous tweets, the meme-coin seems to be on everybody’s minds these days. To prove that, an analytics firm found that in February, Dogecoin, which began as a joke back in 2013, has even surpassed Bitcoin, in terms of being “the most discussed digital asset” on Twitter.  

Stating that “it was inevitable” ICO Analytics shared a chart that mentions the top 20 popular coins such as BTC, ETH, ADA, and others. Doge recorded 10.4% of mentions on Twitter, while BTC and ETH commanded 10.1% and 8.9%, respectively.

Source: ICO Analytics

Elon Musk was one of the most vocal supporters of Doge, tweeting about the coin in February. For instance, a tweet on 10 February from Musk caused a 20% spike in price sending Doge to a new daily high of $0.082 at the time. The tweet in question mentioned Musk’s Dogecoin purchase for his son, ‘Little X,’ who could most probably be the youngest ‘toddler hodler.’ 

Data from Google Trends did not record any surge in interest with ‘DOGE,’ except in one instance. On 29 January, search volume for Dogecoin, worldwide, surpassed that of Bitcoin’s, but it commanded fewer searches compared to BTC after that.  

Source: Google Trends

The meme coin has also captured a current market cap of over $6 billion. A figure that is double of AMC Entertainment, the firm that found itself amid the ‘meme-stocks’ frenzy lately. 

However, doge network has also faced criticism over the past month. Binance CEO ChangPeng Zhao noted that one specific address held 27% of all DOGE coins, whereas the top 20 addresses hold more than 50% of all DOGE. ‘CZ’ speculated that this made the project “kinda centralized in that sense.”

Furthermore, experts think that DOGE is for those who want to tune into Internet culture rather than serious financial gains. According to researchers at RMIT University:

Dogecoin is best thought of as a cultural product, rather than a financial asset. The reality is few cryptocurrency users hold it as a serious investment or to use in regular transactions. Instead, to own Dogecoin is to participate in a culture.

It will be interesting to watch how markets continue to react to DOGE, and whether the ‘joke’ coin will gain serious investors. At press time, DOGE was trading at $0.05 and has been up by 8% in the past week.