By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 20th, 2024
The price of DOGE jumped by around 20% after the recent tweet by Elon Musk. At the time of writing, DOGE is trading at $0.32.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban and the owner of NBA team, Dallas Mavericks have taken his Dogecoin (DOGE) activism to the Ellen DeGeneres show. As reported by Coindesk, Cuban who has taken a likeness to digital currencies in general said investment in Dogecoin is better than a lottery ticket, seeing its growing potential as a currency, and its tendency to rise in the future.
“Cryptocurrency is just an asset to invest in. Bitcoin is kind of like a digital version of gold. Ethereum is a digital version of a currency,” Cuban told DeGeneres. “And then you got dogecoin, which is just fun. But the weird part about it [is] it went from being a cryptocurrency joke to now becoming something that’s becoming a digital currency.”
Dogecoin has grown in popularity in the past month, in which its price has grown by more than 13,600% in the past year, and by over 486% in the trailing 30-day period according to Coingecko. While the major advocate of Dogecoin remains Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and founder of SpaceX, Mark Cuban is remarkably helping to build the utility around the Shiba-Inu-themed coin created as a joke about 8 years ago.
Besides holding Dogecoin investments, Cuban’s team Dallas Mavericks accepts payment in Dogecoin for their merchandise. Decrypt confirmed the team is on track to complete over 6,000 Dogecoin transactions in April, up 550% from the previous month. Cuban through the show tried to convince Ellen DeGeneres to accept the coin as payment “for The Ellen Shop,” claiming the store “could sell a whole lot of stuff for Dogecoin.”
The price of DOGE jumped by around 20% after the recent tweet by Elon Musk. At the time of writing, DOGE is trading at $0.32.
The Dogefather
SNL May 8— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2021
Mark Cuban Highlights Robinhood to be Slowing Down Dogecoin Utility
As the utility around Dogecoin is growing, Mark Cuban has faulted the close transaction model being employed by popular trading app Robinhood. Cuban noted that it is possible to buy and sell Dogecoin on Robinhood but spending the coins or transferring to an external wallet is impaired, further limiting the utility around the cryptocurrency.
“Doge is the one coin that people actually use for transactions,” he tweeted while responding to a question about his support of Dogecoin. “We take many others via @BitPay. But people spend their Doge and that means more businesses will start taking it. The greatest inhibitor to its growth is that you can’t spend the Doge you buy on Robinhood.”
Responding to the criticism, Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev noted “that the platform is “working on deposits and withdrawals! Not just for DOGE, but for all coins on Robinhood Crypto.”
Is Tesla Holding Dogecoin?
It is no news that Tesla keeps Bitcoin (BTC) on its balance sheet following its $1.5 billion purchase back in February and accepts the coin as payment for its products. But is there a possibility that the Wall Street giant has Dogecoin on its balance sheet?
There are speculations the firm may have undisclosed Dogecoin holdings, purportedly tagged to a statement alleging that the company “spent $1.5 billion on cryptocurrencies, many of which were Bitcoin.”
While the news is unsubstantiated, Elon’s love for Dogecoin makes it a plausible reason for the firm to also own a small amount of the coin.