Over five years ago, Elon Musk first posted about Dogecoin (DOGE) on social media. Since then, the token has exploded in popularity, reaching all corners of the internet and generating tens of billions in investment. The first posts about DOGE seemingly came out of nowhere but had a huge impact on the price. Let's take a look at what would have happened if you had the foresight to invest when Musk first tweeted about DOGE.
On April 2, 2019, Musk posted on X, saying "Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It's pretty cool." To this day, the post only has 11,0000 likes, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands that Musk regularly receives in 2024. However, this small and innocent post would spark a memecoin revolution.
At the time of the tweet, DOGE was worth around $0.003, or less than 1/30 of one cent. However, at highs in May 2021, the price of DOGE reached $0.7376. This marked an increase of nearly 24,500% in just over two years. So, if you invested $1,000 in DOGE on April 2, 2019, it would have been worth $245,860 at highs in 2021.
The price of DOGE has since fallen to around $0.16. However, this is still an increase of over 5,000% from the first tweet from Musk, and an investment of $1,000 would currently be worth over $50,000. This marks a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 120%.
Musk has played a huge role in the success of DOGE. While the initial tweet did not have much of an impact on the price, Musk continued to post about DOGE over the next few years, helping to raise awareness about the token. In 2021 DOGE took on a mind of its own, blowing up on social media and experiencing exponential growth. In 2022, Tesla began allowing customers to pay for certain products (mostly merchandise) with DOGE. This announcement also gave a small boost to the price of DOGE.
Most recently, in March 2024, Musk said, "We should enable that" when asked about the possibility of buying a Tesla car with DOGE during a visit to the Berlin gigafactory. Additionally, Musk's social media platform, X, is in the process of securing payment licenses in U.S. states, potentially offering DOGE payments on the platform.
Musk has played a pivotal role in helping DOGE become not only the largest meme coin but also one of the largest cryptocurrencies. Since Musk began posting about the token, it has seen huge gains and attracted tens of billions of dollars in market capitalization and is larger than nearly half the companies in the S & P 500. Musk does not seem to be done with DOGE either, with the potential to continue incorporating it with his many business ventures.