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The crypto market has had its ups and downs over the years, and recent months have been especially volatile for top performers like Bitcoin.
There are altcoins out there which have undergone their own peaks and troughs of popularity, but for very different reasons.
Dogecoin (DOGE) is a stand-out example, with proponents putting it forward as the crypto asset for average people, boasting meme-founded appeal as well as practical utility. So where does it stand as an opportunity for investment in 2023, and how might its price fluctuate in the near future?
The story so far
After its launch in 2013, Dogecoin spent many years as a fringe concern, with its historic price data showing little movement of note until early 2021.
This was the point at which crypto assets of all kinds earned major mainstream attention, and what followed was a meteoric rise, which at one point resulted in the price of DOGE peaking at almost $0.6.
This high watermark wasn’t maintained for long, and over the course of 2022 it trended downwards, with major scandals that rocked the entire market later in the year doing damage to the reputation of all cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin included.
More recently there has been a small recovery in DOGE’s price, suggesting that there’s still a decent amount of momentum behind it. And while it’s impossible to discount the large number of people who effectively put money into it to be in on a shared joke, there’s still more to this asset that needs to be discussed than its meme status.
The arguments in its favor
While it might not have the same market cap or desirability as Bitcoin or Ethereum, it is precisely because Dogecoin doesn’t take itself too seriously that it has both the opportunity to stand the test of time, and the ability to offer more utility than its contemporaries.
The fact that platforms like the SoFi cryptocurrency exchange let you buy and sell DOGE alongside other assets shows that even if it's fundamentally light-hearted, this is still a coin that has widespread backing, which in turn translates into viable utility beyond what most might expect.
Dogecoin is accepted as a payment option by a variety of online retailers, for instance, and this support is far more widespread than you’ll find for other digital tokens that have objectively stronger fundamentals underpinning them.
So it doesn’t really matter what naysayers claim about DOGE, because if you think it can be dismissed because of its frivolity, then you’re missing the point.
The potential for price changes
We’re still at a point where it’s hard to say for certain that the crypto market will enjoy a strong upward trajectory in 2023, following on from a rocky and uncertain 2022.
There are positive signs for Bitcoin’s price increasing, and this in turn is an indicator of how the rest of the market will fare at least in the short term.
What happens over the coming weeks and months for DOGE in particular will be not only determined by movements experienced by larger coins, but whether or not there’s a resurgence in interest in its generated by social media hype.
It is an asset that’s more susceptible to the influence of viral trends than most. And of course if its utility is put in the spotlight as well, we could see a slow but steady return to relevance for Dogecoin.
The bottom line
We’re not likely to see DOGE hit the heady altitudes of its 2021 peak price this year, but it would be pleasing and also plausible for it to trend upwards in value soon.
On the date of publication, Barchart Reach did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.