Dogecoin on Wednesday surged 20% as the cryptocurrency continued to benefit from speculative trading.
The digital coin based on a Shiba Inu meme was trading at about 67 cents, up about 21% for the day. It broke above 50 cents per share for the first time on Tuesday.
Thi surge comes ahead of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s planned appearance on NBC”s “Saturday Night Live.” Musk is a fan of Dogecoin, and the potential for him to talk about the currency on national television could be driving more demand.
Musk, for a longtime fan of Dogecoin, has created a buzz on social media on doge-related interest by promising to incorporate the meme into his appearance.
Some of the biggest spikes for Dogecoin have come after the token was mentioned by Elon Musk on Twitter, messages that were often accompanied by memes.
Dogecoin was started as a joke in 2013, at a time when the cryptocurrency boom was in its infancy.
Doge has regained popularity, apparently boosted by attention from billionaires like Musk and Mark Cuban and easy access through free-trading app Robinhood.
Crypto firm Coinbase lists Dogecoin with a market cap of $87 billion, based on a simple multiplication of price and created coins. That is higher, on paper than the publicly traded Coinbase’s market cap of about $56 billion.
The surge in Dogecoin did not appear to be spilling over into the larger cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin was up slightly in morning trading, while Ether fell 4%.
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