Dogecoin falls 23 per cent: Elon Musk criticises large DOGE owners
The world’s richest man has criticised major DOGE holders for concentrating supply at a few addresses.
Dogecoin (DOGE) fell 23 percent in a matter of hours on 15 February after Elon Musk drew attention to the highly uneven distribution of DOGE coins and called on large holders to sell their holdings. Dogecoin has one of the most Bitcoin Code unequal coin distributions in the cryptocurrency space. 28.7 per cent are held by just one person. The top 12 holders own almost 50 percent of the supply. Shortly before midnight on 14 February, Musk tweeted:
„If big Dogecoin owners sell the majority of their coins, he will have my full support. Too much focus is the only real problem I think.“
Just over seven hours later, the Dogecoin price has fallen 23 per cent from US$0.063 to US$0.048. Musk’s tweets have previously been blamed for movements in cryptocurrency prices, not least Dogecoin. His role in Monday’s decline, on the other hand, is less clear. The total market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies fell by more than 105 billion US dollars at the same time.
Losses of more than 20 per cent have not been uncommon for cryptocurrencies. Altcoins in particular, however, have fallen sharply. Analysts suspect that this was caused by Bitcoin’s (BTC) rise to a new all-time high just a few hours earlier. That took volume out of the altcoin market.
Calculating the exact distribution of a particular cryptocurrency can be difficult because public blockchains are often anonymous
But data from multiple sources shows that nearly 70 percent of the total Dogecoin supply is held in just over 100 addresses.
Dogecoin’s founder recently revealed that he sold all his DOGE holdings in 2015 due to financial difficulties after losing his job. Billy Markus started Dogecoin in 2013 as a joke currency. It was based on the Shiba Inu meme, which was popular at the time. Markus said he found it difficult to understand, let alone explain, the meteoric rise of this coin, which has no real use or value.
Elon Musk’s support for Dogecoin is probably largely in jest. The Tesla founder once described himself as the self-proclaimed CEO of Dogecoin (an open-source cryptocurrency). He has only mentioned the coin in the context of memes, but did not promote it as any kind of investment strategy.