The memecoin’s co-creator said the best thing for Dogecoin would be the creation of a DOGE-ETH bridge and an NFT marketplace for payments.
Dogecoin needs more infrastructure improvements and industry support if it is to continue the extraordinary growth it has seen over the past year, its co-creator Billy Markus has said.
The shiba inu-faced memecoin is farther along the path to becoming a legitimate and useful cryptocurrency than anyone except its near-fanatical fans could have imagined.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has basically dragged DOGE from a cryptocurrency that was not only literally created as a joke — but also designed to be “as ridiculous as possible” in Markus’ words — into the ranks of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Musk’s tweets routinely caused DOGE’s price to spike. Which he acknowledged with his usual humility...
ur welcome pic.twitter.com/e2KF57KLxb— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2021
Markus, an Australian who goes by the Twitter handle Shibetoshi Nakamoto — aka @BillyM2k — tweeted on Sept. 29 that Dogecoin’s progress would be greatly improved by the creation of a bridge between Doge and Ethereum, and NFT marketplaces like OpenSea allowing the resulting “DOGE-ETH token to be used for purchases.”
Markus added:
“NFTs purchasing is high demand with crypto. Allowing for DOGE purchases of NFTs greatly increases its utility.”
Dogecoin began 2021 with a bang, going from a half penny to a penny on New Year's Day.
It began to spike in early April, hitting an all-time high of almost $0.74 on May 8. It has since retreated to $0.20 as of September 30 — which is still a 4,000% gain in 2021.
Listen to the CoinMarketRecap podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
The Doge NFT
On September 20, Markus announced on Twitter that he had launched a “small collection of hand-made pixelated Doge avatars” on OpenSea, the top NFT marketplace.
Prices currently range from 13 ETH (about $39,000 at press time) to 1,337 ETH ($4 million.)
However, the most valuable seems to have been resold for no more than 21 ETH ($65,000) and most under 10 ETH ($31,115). Markus listed them at 0.08 ETH on September 18 — then about $283.
He added:
“There will only be 100 in this collection. Enjoy the silliness :)”
