Are These Three Factors Keeping Dogecoin Distant From The Moon?

Dogecoin DOGE/USD has a market capitalization of $30.33 billion and is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency as of press time. 

The Shiba Inu-themed cryptocurrency has found love from retail investors and celebrities like Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk alike. Yet, the technical soft underbelly of the cute Shiba Inu has also earned fierce criticism. Here are three points of contention between DOGE loyalists and detractors.

DOGE Supply: As of the writing of this piece, DOGE had a circulating supply of nearly 130.16 billion coins. Contrast it with the apex cryptocurrency Bitcoin BTC/USD, which only has a circulating supply of 18.74 million coins. 

See Also: How To Buy Dogecoin (DOGE)

DOGE supply rises by about 5 billion per year. This high supply is often held against the meme coin, but has been cited as an advantage by Musk.

“Doge appears to be inflationary, but is not meaningfully so (fixed # of coins per unit time),” said Musk in February.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also theorized the supply is not a limiting factor. He said, “Any asset that has inflation by definition is 'infinite' [but] that doesn’t diminish it.”

See Also: Doge To The Moon? Mark Cuban Says $1 'Will Definitely' Happen If Mavericks Fans Keep Rolling

The billionaire said that the increasing supply changes DOGE’s utility “from store of value to potentially a digital currency.”

“It’s the fact that they create [5 billion a year] that keeps the per coin price low, which makes it more accessible.”

Dogecoin’s co-creator Billy Markus said in April that only “buying and selling” matters for the price. He said the coin’s value was “ascribed to it by people.”

Such Safety, Much Wow: Dogecoin hashrate is 237.8 Thash/sec, while Bitcoin hashrate is 97.706 Ehash/second as per BitInfoCharts.com at press time. A Thash/sec means one trillion hashes per second, while Ehash/sec is one quintillion hashes per second.

The higher hash rate means a greater amount of computational power is devoted to the maintenance of the blockchain, which makes it more difficult to take over the network or disrupt it.

See Also: If You Invested $1,000 In Dogecoin When Elon Musk Made His SNL Appearance, Here's How Much You Would Have Now

Markus said in April that DOGE had emerged as “one of the most secure coins” on the Proof of Work blockchain. He referred to the coin’s implementation of AuxPOW in 2014 as the moment when it achieved high security. 

This view of Markus was repeated by OkCoin COO Jason Lau who told Benzinga that Dogecoin was “secured by proof of work and has never had any security issues.”

Level-Up For DOGE: The release of Dogecoin Core 1.14.3 was announced in February, which brought under the hood improvements for the meme coin. Even so, the lack of development has been criticized by some — who point to DOGE’s Github page, which has not seen much action since 2017. 

Some like Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that there are “subtle technical factors” that limit Dogecoin scaling.

Musk, too, attracted criticism from some when he said he was working with Dogecoin developers on its “system transaction efficiency” last month. 

See Also: Elon Musk's Dogecoin Donation Helped 63 People Financially Hit By COVID-19, Says Charity

However, it is pertinent to mention that the Dogecoin subreddit crossed the 2 million mark after Musk called on his social media following to submit ideas for DOGE development on Reddit and GitHub in May.

Ideas to improve Dogecoin have come from Cardano ADA/USD founder Charles Hoskinson, and a researcher, who suggested using Musk’s SpaceX satellite service Starlink to improve connectivity between miners.

Read Next: Elon Musk's Development Efforts Could Give Dogecoin A 'Value Floor,' Hopes Cardano Founder