Dogecoin Down Bad: Elon Musk’s Favorite Meme Coin Sheds Post-Election Gains

Dogecoin is fading fast, having lost more than one-third of its value in the last 30 days and shedding all of its gains accumulated after President Trump secured his win last November.

Amid an especially turbulent crypto market of late, DOGE is getting battered. The original and biggest meme coin is now trading for $0.166, CoinGecko data shows, after shooting up to a recent high of $0.48 in the weeks following the November 5 victory of crypto-friendly President Donald Trump.

DOGE dipped as low as as $0.145 on Monday, its lowest price since last October. Dogecoin is up 6% today, recovering after the recent freefall, but the bigger-picture news is still bad: The ninth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is currently priced lower than it was one year ago today.

In derivatives markets, open interest for the coin has also plunged and currently stands at $1.37 billion, according to CoinGlass. Total bets on the future price of the coin in January hit $5.28 billion as crypto euphoria swept markets. Now, the U.S. value of open interest is just below where it was on Election Day.

Derivatives interest has fled as President Trump continues to rattle markets with announcements regarding trade tariffs, sparking a trade war with America’s neighbors. Traders second-guessing the new American leader are cashing out of risk assets like U.S. equities, particularly after he declined to rule out a recession in a weekend interview.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are suffering—but crypto has been hit harder. The market for meme coins, or highly volatile digital coins and tokens often based on internet jokes and subcultures, has crashed in recent weeks. And Bitcoin has fallen from an all-time high above $108,000 to a recent low under $77,000 late Monday.

Dogecoin, which unlike any meme coins runs on its own blockchain, was doing well again in the run-up to Election Day after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, began expressing interest in the coin again. His comments about Dogecoin at Trump campaign rallies helped pump the price, and then it kept climbing after Trump’s win to hit a three-year high.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss—and now close advisor to President Trump—originally showed interest in the asset during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the coin’s value to surge.

Crypto traders hoped that the meme coin would hit similar 2021 highs during this cycle, but Dogecoin is now sitting 78% below its record price from that year of $0.73.

And the fact Musk now runs a government initiative named after the cryptocurrency’s ticker—the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—doesn’t appear to be lending the coin a helping hand amid controversial headlines for its moves.

Decrypt recently spoke with prominent Doge meme and Dogecoin fans about Musk’s DOGE effort. While the meme has typically been celebrated for its fun vibes, the increasing political connection unsurprisingly has Dogecoin supporters divided.

There have been filings for prospective Dogecoin exchange-traded funds in the United States, amid a broader flurry of applications following last year’s Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF approvals. However, traders got bad news on Tuesday: The SEC punted on making a decision regarding Grayscale’s Dogecoin ETF application, giving it until May 21 to make a call.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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