Dogecoin Beats Bitcoin Gains, Skyrockets As Elon Musk Says, 'Dogecoin To The Moon'

The cryptocurrency market has been trading in the red zone over the past weeks with some top performers occasionally trading in the green zone. Among them is the world's first-ever meme coin, Dogecoin, which did not only surge but also beat Bitcoin and Ethereum gains after tech billionaire Elon Musk reaffirmed its support for the crypto asset and said, "Dogecoin to the moon."

Dogecoin is one of the top-performing crypto assets in the industry despite the bear market and prolonged winter dragged by the epic collapse of the crypto derivatives exchange FTX. In the past few days, DOGE has rallied 40%, beating the 8% gain of the world's largest crypto by market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), and the 18% gain of Ethereum (ETH).

After Musk's statement, DOGE saw a price jump of almost 5% and traded at $0.104, holding its rank in the CoinMarketCap list of top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and beating Cardano (ADA).

Musk made the said statement on Twitter Spaces on Saturday when he joined a discussion about Twitter Files and other topics about the newly acquired social media platform. During the conversation, Musk mentioned the launch of a new Twitter verification in about a week.

He was also asked if the social media platform would allow crypto payments, to which he replied, "Dogecoin to the moon." His response earned cheers, especially from DOGE holders.

In crypto speak, the phrase "to the moon" is used by retail investors who are hopeful that the price of a particular crypto asset would "moon" or surge.

Dogecoin's impressive performance during a chaotic crypto market reeling from the implosion of FTX is mainly attributed to Musk's actions over the past weeks.

DOGE started trading in the green zone when Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October. It has seen significant price jumps since, particularly when the new Twitter owner shared his plans for the social media platform, including making it an "everything app" that would incorporate payments and probably cryptocurrency.

But while DOGE holders are overjoyed with the meme coin's performance, analysts fear it might be bad news for the entire crypto industry. "Every time that [the] price of DOGE starts rising rapidly, there's a market-wide crash following just moments later," blockchain analytics firm Santiment said in a market insights note. "Right now, we are observing such a rise. Now the question is, is this time different?"

As of 10:42 p.m. ET on Sunday, DOGE was trading up 2.46% at $0.1042 with a 24-hour volume of $727,933,030, based on the latest data from CoinMarketCap.