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Dogecoin soars to record highs, rises more than 400% on the week

Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman breaks down Dogecoin's skyrocketing performance, Turkey banning cryptocurrency and Coinbase's first week of trading.

Video transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: About nine minutes to the closing bell, cryptocurrencies surging. But we got to talk about Dogecoin, or as some of us like to say, Doggy Coin. Zack Guzman covers crypto for us. And Zack, it surged, what, more than 400% today. So tell us more about Dogecoin, or if you prefer, Dog-E-Coin.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, more than 400% this week there, Adam, and today. And it's been hovering between, at one point, more than 100% just today alone. But when you back up and look at the gains for that crypto over just here in 2021, it's pretty astounding when you compare it to what you could have made.

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Let's just say hypothetically, you put 1,000 bucks into this project, you'd be sitting on more than $55,000 right now at this point in the year, which is that same 1,000 would be 9 grand if you invested in GameStop, pretty much flat if you put it in Tesla. So it just kind of goes to show the insane upside on these. Of course, holding it through all this, there's not a lot of people, I'm sure, out there that would be able to say it.

But of course, when we talk about Dogecoin relative to other projects, people are scratching their heads on this one a bit because it is inflationary. We talk so much about why people point to Bitcoin maybe over the dollar and the fact that there's a limited supply. Not the case with Dogecoin. It is an inflationary asset since there is no limit in terms of how many coins can be minted. It's also one of those ones that was created as a joke by its founders. But Elon Musk has been talking about it for months all the way back to last year. So the hype is real. And maybe that could be possibly the reason as to why we've seen it take off right now.

We've heard a couple of platforms, Robinhood included, dealing with unprecedented volumes in terms of demand now to trade some of these assets. And, you know, from a reasonable perspective, it's tough to really point to a catalyst when we talk about Coinbase. Coinbase doesn't even list Dogecoin right now, although with all this craze right now, they might be rethinking that because they're leaving some fees on the table, guys.

SEANA SMITH: Well, Zack, one thing that's kind of dampening some of this excitement out there, today, we have Turkey banning crypto payments. We're seeing that reflected in Bitcoin's price, at least, under just a little bit of pressure. How big of a headwind do you see this being for Bitcoin and other crypto payments?

ZACK GUZMAN: I mean, when we talk about that, it's something we've gone back and forth on in terms of how many crypto users out there actually use Bitcoin and other assets for payments, right? And that's something that obviously would have some appeal in a country where your currency has come down by about 10% in the last month. Obviously, that might be a piece of why Turkey is pushing this now. This would go into effect at the end of the month. But considering it's only a ban on payments-- people would still be able to transact normally within the ecosystem here-- that could be a piece of why we're seeing a pullback. So this has been a volatile week.

But it is something out there, when we talk about regulation, that does have people maybe a little bit more worried. Then later, we talked about India's potential ban as well. All of these things are pretty difficult to enforce when you think about how the government would actually police something like that, seeing as you'd still be able to send things back and forth. Going after companies who accept it as a form of payment sounds like an easier path to go if that's how they actually want to do what they're talking about here in Turkey.

But obviously, a different situation than what we're dealing with here back in the US, but one of those concerns we still always need to address and talk about whenever we're discussing cryptocurrency, since that's hanging over the heads of a lot of people. Luckily back here in the SEC now, we have Gary Gensler at the head of that. Now that he's been confirmed this week, much friendlier guy when it comes to crypto since he talked about it, taught classes on it at MIT. So it's at least one thing maybe we're lucky to not have to worry about here in the US.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Zack, we will see you later. And Dogecoin, I still prefer Doggy Coin.