
Should You Buy Dogecoin While It's Under $1?
Key Takeaways
The meme coin still has a lot to ve. Dogecoin (DOGE -4. 43%), created in 2013 as a parody of Bitcoin, is named after a meme featuring a Shiba Inu...
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4 min read
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cryptocurrency
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July 1, 2025
07:10 AM
The Motley Fool
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The meme coin still has a lot to ve
Dogecoin (DOGE -4. 43%), created in 2013 as a parody of Bitcoin, is named after a meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog
Many investors initially dismissed it as a joke, but this little token generated some massive gains over the ing 12 years
Dogecoin started trading at just $0. 00026, but it skyrocketed to a record high of $0. 7376 on May 8, 2021
Its rally was driven by big endorsements from Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg, and other high-file celebrities -- and amplified by the buying frenzy in meme stocks, cryptocurrencies, and other speculative investments in 2020 and 2021
Image source: Getty Images
Today, Dogecoin trades at $0
Therefore, a $100 investment would have briefly grown to $283,692 before shrinking to $61,538
However, its gain of more than 61,400% is still impressive
And some bullish investors expect its price to soar to $1 in the near future
So should you buy Dogecoin today
How does Dogecoin work
Dogecoin was created from the open-source code for Litecoin, another token that was forked (split) from Bitcoin's blockchain in 2011
Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Litecoin are both mined with the energy-intensive of of work (PoW) consensus mechanism
Dogecoin differentiates itself from Bitcoin and Litecoin with Scrypt, a prietary hashing algorithm that cesses transactions faster and requires less mining power
Dogecoin can also be "merge-mined" with Litecoin, which means its miners can simultaneously mine for both tokens with the same computational work
Therefore, when a miner solves a PoW blem on Litecoin's primary blockchain, that same hash solution is submitted to Dogecoin's auxiliary blockchain -- and the miner earns rewards on both coins
That's a convenient way to kill two birds with one stone, but both coins can still be mined independently
Un Bitcoin, which is deflationary with a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, Dogecoin is an inflationary token without a fixed supply limit
Nearly 150 billion Dogecoins are in circulation today, and that supply is climbing by roughly 5 billion tokens annually
Dogecoin's creators designed it to incentivize payments instead of hoarding, which is also a drawback since it can't be valued by its scarcity, un Bitcoin
And as a PoW blockchain, Dogecoin can't natively support smart contracts -- which are used to develop decentralized apps (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other crypto assets -- a of-of-stake (PoS) blockchain
So, un PoS tokens, it can't be valued by its usefulness for developers
What catalysts could drive Dogecoin above $1
Those limitations make Dogecoin a difficult cryptocurrency to value
The biggest near-term driver for its price is bably Elon Musk, who owns Dogecoin and often tweets it on X
Musk's creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump Administration, which was ly named after Dogecoin, drove its price higher
Even though Musk recently left DOGE, he still holds Dogecoin and could keep driving its near-term price swings with his unpredictable tweets
He also had Tesla accept Dogecoin payments for certain ducts (but not its electric vehicles)
More es could that lead if Dogecoin's price rises and stabilizes
The token could also get a big boost if the recent filings for spot-price ETFs and other financial ducts from Grayscale Investments, Bitwise Asset Management, and 21s are apved
Those apvals, which would the spot-price ETF apvals for Bitcoin and Ethereum, could draw in more retail and institutional investors
Meanwhile, several "whales" -- or big investors who can move Dogecoin's price -- have been aggressively accumulating the token this year
Those big anonymous purchasers could drive its price higher
Lastly, declining interest rates, more-relaxed regulations, and other tailwinds for the broader crypto market could bring back more bulls
But should you buy it while it's far below $1
I'm not convinced Dogecoin will rally to $1 anytime soon for three simple reasons: It's inflationary, it isn't useful for developers (except for sidechains which indirectly tether Dogecoin's blockchain to smart contracts), and a 525% rally to $1 would boost its market cap from $24 billion to $150 billion
That would be nearly half of Ethereum's current market cap of $294 billion -- yet Dogecoin arguably has fewer near-term and long-term catalysts than Ether
So while Dogecoin might be an interesting play for speculative investors, I don't think it's worth buying yet
Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned
The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tesla
The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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