A 33-year-old Los Angeles resident has claimed that he became a Dogecoin millionaire in “just 69 days” after investing about $180,000 (Rs. 1.3 crore approximately) on February 5 in the meme cryptocurrency, when its price was about $0.045 cent (Rs. 3 approximately). Glauber Contessoto put out a video on YouTube in which he explained why he decided to invest in Dogecoin. The light-hearted dog-themed cryptocurrency soared to an all-time high on April 16, when it touched $0.45 (Rs. 34 approximately). And as a result, the investor said, his initial investment had grown to almost $2 million (Rs. 15 crore approximately).
Experts, however, have warned about the risks involved in investing in such digital currencies since the prices of these volatile assets can fall as sharply as they go up. Also, there’s no guarantee that the cash will be converted back into physical currency. For people who can afford to take the risk though, the rise of cryptocurrency has been a windfall.
In the video, Contessoto said he was inspired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to put his money into Dogecoin. Contessoto said he works at a music company in Los Angeles and comes from a middle-class family. To invest in the digital asset, he said, he used all his savings and also sold all the stock he owned, including Tesla and Uber.
He made the investment through his Robinhood account and posted a screenshot of his millionaire status on Reddit. Contessoto’s post has been upvoted 85 per cent and attracted more than 5,000 comments, but his claims cannot be independently verified.
Is cryptocurrency legal in India?
At the time of writing, cryptocurrency is still legal in India, but the government has proposed a legislation to regulate trading in cryptocurrencies. There has been talk of a ban on the use of “all private cryptocurrencies” in the country, except the one being mooted by the Reserve Bank of India.
However, the crypto industry is still growing fast in India and there are many marketplaces where you can purchase crypto coins here. Many of these marketplaces have continued to attract funding as well.
What does Elon Musk have to do with Dogecoin?
The rise of Dogecoin has been heavily influenced by Musk, whose tweets have, time and again, sent the price of the cryptocurrency soaring. On April 15, he tweeted the photo of a 1926 painting ‘Dog Barking At The Moon’ by a Spanish artist and changed the title of the artwork ‘Doge barking at the moon’, referring to the cryptocurrency. That took the value of Dogecoin to all-time high.
In February, a series of tweets by Musk, hailing Dogecoin, took the value of the meme-based cryptocurrency to wild levels. He first tweeted a photo of a rocket reaching the moon, and followed it up with a one-word tweet: “Doge”.
Dogecoin was launched in 2013 and has the image of a Shiba Inu dog as its logo. It was the brainchild of techies Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who started it merely as a joke to sidestep traditional banking fees in 2013 when it was trading around $0.000232 (Rs. 0.017).
Since touching an all-time high on April 16, however, the cryptocurrency has been on a downslide. On Wednesday, at the time of writing, its value was around Rs. 22 approximately.