Dogecoin Surges as Reddit Traders Push to Make It the Crypto GameStop | Hacker News Reader

Dogecoin Surges as Reddit Traders Push to Make It the Crypto GameStop

forbes.com

47 pointsrowanseymour19 comments

Before it was an investment vehicle or speculation tool, before it was even a technology, cryptocurrency was a political statement. Bitcoin, fundamentally, is predicated on a belief about the relationship between government, money, and freedom. It's not a belief I happen to share, which is why I have never and will never invest in it, regardless of price or utility.

I thought I would never invest in any cryptocurrency. But, as it turns out, there actually is one cryptocurrency which does reflect my beliefs: Dogecoin, whose overriding philosophy is "I don't know the details of how any of this works and it all seems rather silly." Last time I checked my holdings were about twelve cents, which as a purely-symbolic position seems more or less reasonable.

I am entirely unsurprised that Dogecoin would be associated with WSB. There is no market or financial relationship between the two. But they are both, in their own way, an example of shitposting that became serious enough to matter. A joke taken too far, until it stopped being just a joke (but never stopped being a joke).

IIUC the trick with GameStop is that some big traders are shorting it, and eventually they will have to buy it at whatever price it is. But ... who is shorting Dogecoin?

Disclaimer 1: I didn't invest in neither. I'm here just for the popcorn.

Disclaimer 2: This is not financial advice.

Disclaimer 3: Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

The article doesn't say anyone is shorting Dogecoin — just that the people buying/encouraging are referencing the GameStop short squeeze.

As far as I can tell, it's just people trying to flex their muscles and see if they can do the same thing with Dogecoin (both for the lulz and to make some money in the process).

So basically a pump and dump.

Yes.

The lack of a 150% short interest on Dogecoin limits the extent to which it can go like the other one.

Reading the Dogecoin subreddit, when Robinhood stopped allowing users to buy AMC/GME, they just bought DOGE instead.

Or, those posters are DOGE-whales, if such a thing exists, who are pumping it.

Or both. Who knows.

pump and dump at a global scale, because GME was mostly US market. They are hoping the global numbers can replicate the short squeeze.

Great, HN is going to be a boiler room now.

Setting my watch for about a week to see when dang decides that a rule against promoting specific stocks or options is necessary ...

(meanwhile, can somebody pump XLM so it becomes me worth working out how to cash out the freebie I got from keybase?)

I would think (hope? (pray????)) that if posts straight up encouraging stock pumping became any kind of common here, that they would get flagged into the ground.

Gamestop was a short squeeze though - Dogecoin isn't in that same position as far as I know?

Presumably the logic of these memers is "Where we're going, we don't need shorts!"

What's going on with dogecoin is just a pump and dump.

At one time I had 137k Dogecoin, which was traded from leftover BTC after cashing out[0]. I picked Dogecoin solely because I could get 137k of them, which I think was worth about $20 at the time. Apparently that would be worth over $1k right now, but sadly I shoved it in a bter account and it is now lost. C'est la vie.

I still think cryptocurrencies are largely an experiment in the application of contemporary memetics to scam people, but I have to admit that said experiment has produced wildly more successful results so far than I had ever anticipated. The power behind the convergent desires of get-rich-quick schemers, true believers, conspiracy theorists, anarcho-capitalists, and complexity fetishists is a pretty terrible thing to behold. My prediction would be that this particular maneuver won't work because only just over one of those groups really have any interest in its success (believers and some schemers). Then again, all my other predictions about cryptocurrencies have been wrong so far.

[0] I took advantage of a hype cycle to make ~$1k. I kinda regret it because in a small way my greed-driven maneuver contributed to the current state of BTC and its ludicrous energy usage.

I have an honest question, since a lot of your predictions have been wrong so far. Why are you not interested more in some alternative explanation/theory that would better fit data you have at hand ?

I am, but as of yet I find other theories unconvincing and difficult to disentangle from the propaganda besides.

For instance, people claim that cryptocurrencies have real utility, and cite their use of moving money out of countries where traditional international currency transfer is difficult. While that is true, since the function of those transactions is to use the currency as a medium of exchange of other currencies it cannot explain the volatility of the exchange rate, as the current exchange rate is irrelevant if your purpose is simply to convert to and from other currencies.

The volatility is due to speculation, but without real utility it is difficult to see what anyone could be speculating on. One could say "belief that the value of the currency will continue to increase", but that's essentially admitting to it being a pyramid scheme. If people ever stop believing and refuse to buy, which would be easy to do since it is nothing to spin up another coin, the price collapses.

Now admittedly I am not an economist, so I make no claim to the correctness of my assessment other than that it makes sense to me. However, the vast majority of people pushing cryptocurrencies aren't economists either.

I think a lot of the volatility could be attributed to moving money around. When you want to move money out of a country you need to find someone willing to sell bitcoin in the currency you have. Then you need to find someone willing to buy the bitcoin in the new currency you want. Since it’s difficult already to move money between said currencies, the friction is likely to be seen as volatility in the price. You’ll also see big swings just from moving a lot of money.

I’d be more skeptical of the moving money around hypothesis but I know people who looked into it when thinking about leaving the US. So at least people are honestly looking at bitcoin for that purpose, even if it may be impractical.

More like $4,000 now!

Crazy.

As is tradition.

(Dogecoin, not surprisingly, has had these kinds of run in every bitcoin bubble since its inception)

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