By early 2021, Dogecoin had become a meme stock as much as a meme coin. WallStreetBets retail traders, Robinhood users, and Elon fans all piled in. The price climbed from under a penny in January to $0.05 by late January. By April it was at $0.30. On May 8, 2021 — the day Elon hosted Saturday Night Live — Dogecoin hit $0.73, an all-time high. The market cap exceeded $85 billion, briefly larger than Boeing or Costco.
This wasn’t just a rally; it was a cultural moment. People who had never bought a stock in their lives owned Doge. There were viral videos of teenagers and grandmothers checking their wallets in disbelief. Newscasters who couldn’t pronounce “Dogecoin” had to. For a few weeks in spring 2021, an internet joke about a Shiba Inu was one of the most valuable monetary assets in the world.
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