The world's first and arguably most popular memecoin, Dogecoin DOGE/USD has faced flak from skeptics over its speculative nature and lack of tangible use cases.
What Happened: Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, made one of the sharpest attacks on the dog-themed cryptocurrency at the Consensus 2024 event last week when he said, "I don't think Dogecoin has been a good thing for the industry."
Garlinghouse questioned what the use case of the project was and what projects were being built to solve real-world problems. He argued that the long-term prospects of a project shouldn't be driven by speculation but rather by its real-world utility.
Dogecoin was born out of the legendary meme on Kabosu, the Shiba Inu dog, kickstarting the trend of meme-based cryptocurrencies, which continue to be a hot market to this day.
While lacking any fundamentals, the coin's movement has been largely driven by social posts and endorsements by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk.
Speculations of DOGE getting integrated into Musk's corporate ecosystem, including as a payment option on social platform X have gained steam from time to time, only to die down subsequently.
Why It Matters: Dogecoin has trailed its canine rival Shiba Inu SHIB in year-to-date gains, rising 61% in comparison to SHIB's 123% spike.
The Shiba Inu ecosystem has tried to rise above the memecoin label over the last year, launching blockchain-based projects like layer-1 chain, Shibarium, and the decentralized exchange Shibaswap. This may have led to more confidence in the project's long-term viability. Dogecoin, on the other hand, doesn't boast of any such products.
But the views of critics, including that of Garlinghouse, are in stark contrast to those of billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Cuban has been one of the most vocal proponents of DOGE and been accepting DOGE as payment for tickets and merchandise for the NBA team.
Price Action: At the time of writing, DOGE was exchanging hands at $0.1454, following a 0.59% drop in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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