- Dogecoin spiked roughly 200% to another record on Friday after an inscrutable Elon Musk tweet appeared to reference it.
- The coin has now climbed 520% over the past week, according to Coinbase data.
- Experts warn of a bubble waiting to burst caused by "just a surge in interest from people looking to get rich quick."
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Dogecoin spiked more than 200% on Friday to a record high after Elon Musk tweeted another inscrutable message that appeared to reference the meme currency.
At 12:33 a.m. ET on Friday, the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder published a tweet to his 51 million followers saying "Doge Barking at the Moon." Attached was a photo of a creature that resembles a dog staring at an object that resembles a moon.
The caption of the billionaire executive is a version of the "to the moon" slang dogecoin bulls use in reference to the astronomical rise in dogecoin's price.
Dogecoin hit a 24-hour high of $0.43 around 9:45 a.m. ET and was trading at $0.38 as of 10:35 a.m. ET, according to data from Coinbase.
For the week, the price of the token portrayed by a Shiba Inu dog has skyrocketed 520%.
"The Dogecoin rally once again defies all expectations," Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky, CEO and founder of Allnodes, a non-custodial service provider, told Insider. "It feels like a black swan event on the crypto market because of how unpredictable it is. A market correction should follow this type of sudden gain."
Some experts have expressed concern about a bubble waiting to burst. Freetrade analyst David Kimberley said the latest uptick is not indicative of any "meaningful value the cryptocurrency offers" but rather "just a surge in interest from people looking to get rich quick."
"When everyone is doing this, the bubble eventually has to burst and you're going to be left short-changed if you don't get out in time. And it's almost impossible to say when that's going to happen," he said. "And if you're the one left holding on to the coins when the market tanks, you may regret taking a punt in the first place."
The jump in dogecoin's price isn't only prompted by the newly self-appointed Technoking of Tesla, though he has spurred the price to skyrocket in the past. In February, Musk published a one-word tweet that sent dogecoin up by 25% in minutes.
Rather, dogecoin was also lifted by a broader cryptocurrency rally ahead of Coinbase's direct listing on the Nasdaq on Wednesday viewed by many as a milestone for the digital currency ecosystem.
The token spiked as much as 34% on Tuesday, bringing its total market capitalization above $11 billion - making it more valuable than a number of large companies - in lockstep with bitcoin hitting a new record that day, as well as ether.
"There are many different reasons that people are buying it, and it's more or less gone mainstream at this point," said Billy Markus, an IBM engineer and a cocreator of Dogecoin, told Insider. "It's one of the most volatile assets you can make a bet on, but people right now have a lot of reasons to make that bet, and that is being reflected in the market."
Dogecoin, which started as a joke in 2013 created by Markus and Jackson Palmer, has shot to fame thanks to well-known backers such as Musk, but also rapper Snoop Dogg and Kiss member Gene Simmons. Both intended dogecoin to be a fast and cheaper alternative to bitcoin.
It also has a strong community on Reddit that started in 2013 with members cheering each other on whenever the price rallies. Satoshi Street Bets also on Reddit started in 2020-a take on the famed Wall Street Bets-also discusses dogecoin although it includes the broader cryptocurrency market.