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 After experiencing a rollercoaster-like rise and fall, the cryptocurrency Dogecoin has recently become a "newcomer in the currency circle". However, after all, cryptocurrency is just a "plaything" used for investment and profit. If you can't see the essence and become obsessed with it, it will only become a spark after the bubble bursts. This article comes from the WeChat public account: New Weekly (ID: new-weekly), author: Liang Hao, header image from: Visual China “It started out as a joke, but now it's unattainable. ” The myth of wealth creation in the currency circle always makes many people "stunned", but this time it is not Bitcoin that even the mahjong masters on the street know about that makes countless players doubt their lives: On April 15, the price of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin began to rise linearly, with a single-day increase of more than 200%. The price soared nearly five times within a week, and the highest market value once reached 50 billion US dollars (approximately 324.2 billion yuan), surpassing the market value of many mainstream banks in Europe and the United States.  The market value of Dogecoin once exceeded that of internationally renowned banks such as HSBC and Barclays. / Unsplash April 20th was undoubtedly a "glory moment" for Dogecoin fans: as people's emotions rose, Dogecoin once again started a roller coaster mode, with the price of each coin rising to a maximum of $0.423840. At the same time, "DogeDay" became a hot word on the Internet that day. There were 181,000 tweets with the hashtag #Doge on Twitter, ranking first on the day. Some people even urged Dogecoin fans on Twitter to increase their purchases and strive to increase its price to $1 per coin.  “On "Dog Day", enthusiastic fans called for the price of Dogecoin to continue to rise. / Twitter @InteralCool The craze for Dogecoin even caused cryptocurrency trading systems such as Robinhood to collapse. On one hand, Dogecoin fans became rich overnight, while on the other hand, Bitcoin holders were "buried" overnight: Since many countries have announced bans on the use of cryptocurrency for online circulation, some traditional cryptocurrencies have continued to plummet since April 16. Among them, the cliff-like decline of Bitcoin has attracted the most attention. As of 4 pm on April 22, Beijing time, the price of Bitcoin has dropped to US$53,414.39 per coin (approximately 344,600 yuan), which is undoubtedly a huge difference from the historical high of nearly US$64,000 per coin 6 days ago.  Mainstream cryptocurrencies fell sharply across the board, but Dogecoin bucked the trend and rose. / Twitter @micnike2 Behind the plummeting and rising prices of cryptocurrency, there are naturally countless bubbles supporting this crazy roller coaster. People enjoy the excitement on the roller coaster and indirectly bear the risks after the bubble bursts. The “upstart in the currency circle” who is famous for relying on traffic” Although the fluctuations of Dogecoin are very obvious, its overwhelming momentum has crushed its "big brothers" Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., and jumped to fifth place in the total market capitalization list of cryptocurrencies. Some people may say that violent fluctuations in the currency circle are normal, and the increases in the past few days are nothing. But if we move forward in time, the rise of Dogecoin will shock young people who want to get rich and prosperous for ten thousand years: Since entering 2021, Dogecoin’s highest increase has reached 9977%； If you push forward a little further, from the low point of March 13, 2020 - US$0.001158 per coin, the price of one Dogecoin has increased by a full 405 times. The counterattack of this "upstart in the currency circle" begins with an emoticon from a few years ago.  There is guaranteed to be at least one emoticon package related to it in your mobile phone. In 2013, the market value of Bitcoin rose rapidly, with the price of each coin rising from worthless to dozens of dollars. In the same year, an "explosion" incident occurred between 4chan and Reddit, two well-known foreign social forums: a group of 4chan netizens plastered the face of Kabosu, a Japanese Shiba Inu that had been widely circulated three years ago, on various pictures related to American elements. Overnight, these pictures took over Reddit.； After that, various emoticons about Doge that did not feel inconsistent were widely circulated around the world. At the same time, former IBM software engineer Billy Marcus was working on a new type of electronic currency. When he saw that Bitcoin speculators were enjoying it, he roped in his Australian friend Jackson Palmer, who worked in the Adobe Systems Marketing Department. In this way, the two people, with the idea of taking advantage of the hot spot, used the code of another cryptocurrency Litecoin to create a "cottage-like" Dogecoin. In order to maximize the traffic of Doge, Marcus also bought the domain name dogecoin.com to benchmark the official website of Bitcoin bitcoin.com； In order to mock Bitcoin, he even changed his Twitter name to Shibetoshi Nakaoto to mock the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.  Even when compared with Bitcoin, Dogecoin is a sincere copycat. The "wow" next to Doge is very ironic. / Getty Images After everything is ready, Dogecoin is officially launched. Initially, Marcus's vision for Dogecoin was to make it a "faster, more 'fun' alternative" to Bitcoin, so there was no total issuance set - which was completely different from the 21 million total that was set when Bitcoin was issued. However, with the help of the social forum Reddit, netizens who were still in Doge seemed to have discovered a new world, and the traffic increased exponentially. Half a month later, Dogecoin became the seventh largest virtual currency in the world at the time. Seeing this unexpected popularity, Palmer may have a lot of questions. As of April 2021, there are 129 billion Dogecoins in circulation around the world. Some foreign media believe that this may explain why one Dogecoin is worth only 30 cents (approximately 1.9 yuan), while one Bitcoin is worth US$54,000 (approximately 350,000 yuan). The Invisible Driver: Social Media and Musk As the older brother of cryptocurrency, the function of Bitcoin has been transformed from investment to real-life consumption in some countries and regions. In June 2020, Coca-Cola Amatil, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola and the largest non-alcoholic beverage distributor in the Asia-Pacific region, cooperated with Centrapay, a digital asset management company, to enable Bitcoin payment functions on 2,000 vending machines in Australia and New Zealand. Consumers can use Bitcoin to scan QR codes to pay for drinks. In the early years, Bitcoin could be used to pay electricity, gas, heating and drinking water bills in Germany, and even university tuition and fees. But Dogecoin doesn’t have much practical use in the real world. In addition to being used for investment, the most popular use of Dogecoin is to reward online artists on social platforms. It is precisely because of the popularity of the online community that Dogecoin is particularly loved by netizens. According to foreign media reports, on the eve of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the online organization "Dogecoin Community" established a fundraising event to raise US$50,000 for the Jamaican bobsled team to participate in the Winter Olympics, and later also raised funds for Indian Winter Olympic athlete Shiva Keshavan. Afterwards, the exchange rate of Dogecoin against Bitcoin increased by nearly 50%. After that, the "Dogecoin community" launched two more charity fundraising activities that year, including using Dogecoin to raise US$30,000 to support water resource protection on the eve of World Water Day, and investing US$55,000 (equivalent to 67.8 million Dogecoins at the time) to draw the Dogecoin icon on NASCAR driver Josh Wise's racing car for promotion.  The earliest publicity activities for Dogecoin were all launched online. /Wikipedia After that, Dogecoin has been living a tepid life in the currency circle without much fluctuation until 2019. “Dogecoin is probably my favorite cryptocurrency,” Elon Musk tweeted out of the blue on April 2, 2019. “It’s so cool. ” The tweet actually echoed an online poll a day earlier on Dogecoin’s “official” Twitter, asking who would be the best CEO of the cryptocurrency — if ever. Among more than 4,000 participants, Musk received a higher vote share than three other well-known figures involved in cryptocurrency. A year later, a TikTok short video began to completely change Dogecoin’s status in the currency circle. “Dogecoin is actually worthless,” TikTok user James Galante said in a video that has been viewed more than a million times. “TikTok has 800 million users. Once (Dogecoin market cap) reaches $1, you will have $10,000. Tell everyone you know and let's all get rich! ” With the help of celebrities, the price of Dogecoin began to rise slightly, heading towards the target of $1 per coin. And Musk’s several tweets after 2021 will undoubtedly be the catalyst that helps Dogecoin soar into the sky. For example, after Musk called Dogecoin “the people’s cryptocurrency” on Twitter on February 4, the market value of Dogecoin rose by 60%. 4月15日，马斯克贴上了1926年西班牙超现实主义画家胡安·米罗（Joan Miró）的作品Dog Barking at the Moon，发了一条内容为“Doge Barking at the Moon”的神秘推特：  I believe everyone can guess what happened after that. It needs to be explained here that “moon(ing)” is slang related to cryptocurrency on social media. If someone says that a certain coin is "moon(ing)", it means that the price of this coin is experiencing a peak. Although Musk's series of remarks drove Dogecoin to a peak, the world's second richest man does not hold any Dogecoin. Tesla, his electric car brand that has had many problems recently, holds $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. It's all bubbles, just a moment of fireworks “Elon Musk's endorsement is a big deal. ”In the Dogecoin version of Reddit (R/Dogecoin), 22-year-old Tanner Sims invested $500 in Dogecoin last year, and now he has earned $16,000. “This gives me a lot of confidence. ” An investor claimed in an interview with US Newsweek that he invested all his savings of approximately US$190,000 in Dogecoin in February this year. Two months later, the investment had grown to more than US$2 million. Since Musk began to "bring goods" for Dogecoin in January this year and became popular, there are many users on Reddit who have jumped out to claim that they have made millions in profit. Reddit has become the world's largest and most fanatical online exchange center for financial retail investors. According to statistics from the American "Forbes" business magazine, in the week alone when Dogecoin surged, the number of Reddit members increased by 25%.  Fanatic retail investors have become prosperous overnight thanks to Dogecoin, and the one they should be most grateful to is Reddit. / Unsplash But some people have discovered that the Reddit community and Dogecoin’s assets seem to be related to each other: as the price of Dogecoin continues to rise, it will trigger greater discussion and interest on Reddit, and finally promote more investment in Dogecoin, and then repeat, repeat, and repeat. Indeed, once Dogecoin skyrockets, it will definitely trigger discussions among forum members all night long, and then use social media such as Twitter as a promoter to call on more retail investors to "get rich together"... Why does this "self-reinforcing" feedback loop inexplicably smell like a pyramid scheme? “This is the most transparent pump and dump scam I've ever seen, although I'm not sure we can even call it a scam since everyone involved knew it was a scam beforehand. ”Glenn Goodman, a senior British trader and author of the book "The Crypto Trader", warned people "not to jump on the Dogecoin bandwagon" in an interview with Forbes business magazine. Musk’s series of apparently “promoting” tweets have also worried some cryptocurrency investors. Nick Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, called it a “speculative instrument” and warned retail investors that “Dogecoin will lose money.” “The rise of Dogecoin is a classic example of the 'Big Fool Theory' at work," investment analyst David Kimberly said in an exclusive interview with the American Consumer News and Business Channel. "People are buying cryptocurrency, not because they think it has any meaningful value, but because they hope that other people will rush in, pushing the price up, and then they can sell it and make a quick buck. ”  Contemporary currency speculators watch Musk’s Twitter as much as they did a few years ago to keep an eye on Trump’s Twitter to understand the situation in the United States. /Reuters But Dogecoin’s founder, Marcus, hasn’t benefited from its meteoric growth. According to foreign media reports, Marcus sold all his Dogecoins when he lost his job in 2015 and used the money to buy a Honda Civic. Four years later, he deleted all his tweets and YouTube videos and disappeared from the Internet. Abnormal behavior of cryptocurrency has long been closely watched by the financial departments of many countries. On April 14, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell publicly criticized cryptocurrencies, saying that cryptocurrencies are actually tools for speculation, mainly used to bet on price increases, and have not yet reached the status of a payment mechanism. A month ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen believed that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin were the main driver of "illegal financing" and warned that they "are a 'very inefficient' way to transfer funds." According to CoinDesk, after Turkey declared cryptocurrency illegal, the South Korean Government Policy Coordination Office also announced on April 19 that it would unite multiple government departments to severely crack down on all "illegal activities involving virtual assets." Our country’s regulatory authorities also made it clear a few years ago that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin may have higher speculative risks, higher money laundering risks, and risks of being exploited by illegal criminals or organizations. On March 19 this year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the People's Bank of China jointly released six typical cases for punishing money laundering crimes. One of the cases involved the use of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin to commit fraud and money laundering crimes. “There was a phenomenon in the 2008 financial crisis, that is, some financial products that are divorced from the real economy will have problems. Therefore, although we cannot yet draw qualitative conclusions (on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin), we must be careful. ”At this year's Boao Forum for Asia, Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China, said that both digital currencies and digital assets should be closely integrated with the real economy and serve the real economy. In the endless discussions on Reddit, some people are starting to wake up. In a recent Reddit post, there was an animation of a Doge wearing a space suit floating in the space station, and underneath the Doge was written: “I don’t know what I’m doing. ” “These coins make a great plaything. ”Toben Barok, the author of the post, is very worried about people having big discussions on R/Dogecoin these days, “but a lot of people are investing their life savings and I think that’s a bad idea right now. ” Indeed, the cryptocurrency market is like a game of drumbeat: In crypto markets, a small group of players typically hold a large amount of the “currency” in circulation. When anyone sells all the "currency" they hold, the bubble will eventually burst and the entire market will collapse. But there is no criterion for the bursting of a bubble. No one knows when the drumming will suddenly stop. Naturally, no one wants to be the "doer" who gets the flowers after the drumming stops suddenly. In any case, the beautiful vision of getting rich quickly through cryptocurrency will always be just a risky game of cutting leeks and being cut. Any player who jumps on this bandwagon, if he cannot see clearly the nature of cryptocurrency and is obsessed with greed, will eventually become a fragile victim after the bubble bursts. After all, if you lick the dog to the end, you will end up with nothing. References: [1] A myth in the currency circle! It rose 400% in a week, 400 times in a year, and has a market value of 320 billion! How big is the Dogecoin bubble? Wall Street Insights. 2021-4-17 [2] Dogecoin went from becoming a god to falling, but only in 24h. Financial partners. 2021-4-18 [3] Bitcoin Apocalypse: Speculation, Bubbles and Anti-Humanity. 36Kr. 2021-4-18 [4] Zhou Xiaochuan: There are still questions about the benefits of digital assets to the real economy. Observer. 2021-4-20 [5] Behind the 40 billion yuan “biggest case in the currency circle”, virtual currency has become a “new channel” for cross-border money laundering. China News Weekly. 2021-4-25 [6] Dogecoin, Elon Musk—And the Latest Reddit Mania. Forbes. 2020-4-21 [7] ‘Let’s All GetRich’—Teen TikTok Traders Want To Send ‘Joke’ Bitcoin Rival Dogecoin To The Moon. Forbes. 2020-7-9 This article comes from the WeChat public account: New Weekly (ID: new-weekly), author: Liang Hao This content is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Huxiu. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. For authorization, please contact hezuo@huxiu.com If you have any objections or complaints about this manuscript, please contact tougao@huxiu.com End A recruitment with prizes! ! ! Whether you are a digital or smart home expert Car enthusiasts or the new trendy young people? 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