If ever there were a case of “buy the rumor, sell the fact,” it occurred Saturday night with dogecoin.
Since Tesla head and self-proclaimed “CEO of dogecoin” Elon Musk tweeted last month that he would be hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8, the excitement level of the dogearmy somehow found another gear, pushing the already hypercharged price of the meme-based cryptocurrency to even more astronomical levels in the lead-up.
After all, since Musk’s tweets had acted as jet fuel to dogecoin’s price all year, just imagine what an appearance on national television could do!
Musk, through his appearance, was apparently going to somehow bring awareness of dogecoin to the masses and propel the price of the cryptocurrency to Mars and beyond. Not since Jesus rode on the back of a donkey through the streets of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday had expectations for one person been so high.
Yesterday, that excitement reached a crescendo with the price of dogecoin hitting an all-time high of 74 cents, up more than 15,000% After giving back some gains yesterday after skeptic Barry Silbert (CEO of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent) announced he was shorting dogecoin, excitement again mounted as SNL’s 11:30 p.m. ET start neared, with doge climbing back to 70.18 cents apiece.
Given the hype, the dogearmy needed Musk to do something super big. He didn’t. While he was charming and more relatable than usual – his mom joining him on stage during the monologue helped – this was far from the history-making, chock-full-of-memes moment the dogearmy was praying for. Nor was Musk very funny. Dogecoin was never going to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency based on this performance.
As such, almost from the moment Musk appeared onstage unaccompanied by 100 Shiba Inus and a fawning Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell, the price of dogecoin started falling. And falling. By the time SNL ended ealy Sunday ET, dogecoin was under 56 cents, a drop of more than 20%. By 9 a.m. ET it had reached as low as 41.8 cents giving back almost all the gains of the previous week – along with more than $20 billion in market cap – before rebounding somewhat to 48.5 cents at press time, down 32% in the last 24 hours.
As Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Baird, put it:
Still, even with today’s drop, dogecoin is up more than 10,000% year to date. And the dogearmy has undoubtedly resigned itself to waiting for the next tweet that will push dogecoin to $1.00 and beyond.
Hope, like the dogearmy, springs eternal.