By The Economic Times
8 May, 2019
The Dogecoin mania has reached Indian cryptocurrency exchanges.
Named after a meme of the Japanese dog breed Shiba Inu and with supporters including Tesla’s Elon Musk, the cryptocurrency has risen over 10X in the last three months, with its market cap standing at almost $80 billion on Thursday.
Indian cryptocurrency exchanges are now witnessing record-breaking trading volumes of Dogecoin, causing massive surge in traffic on these platforms.
On Wednesday, Binance-owned WazirX’s Doge/INR trading slowed its system as the platform saw record traffic that it did not have the capacity to support.
Soon, #WazirXScam trended on microblogging Twitter, as users complained of unexecuted Doge trades.
CoinSwitch Kuber, backed by Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global, registered 200% growth in Dogecoin volumes month on month, with a jump of 1300% for Dogecoin in the last two weeks alone.
Dogecoin’s volumes and prices are also peaking across the world on the much-anticipated appearance of Musk on an American TV show on May 8.
Musk has hinted at discussing Dogecoin during his appearance on Saturday Night Live, driving retail investors to invest in the crypto asset.
Active traders on WazirX jumped by 123% in April and have been consistently growing on other platforms like CoinDCX.
Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX, said the platform is being re-architected to deal with the expected surge on May 8 that could double or triple from Wednesday’s peak.
Shetty estimates that Dogecoins worth Rs 600 crore have been traded on the platform in the last 24 hours. On Coinswitch Kuber average daily volumes have been around Rs 100 crore in the last two weeks.
Most Indian crypto exchanges have listed the token, although some like ZebPay have steered away despite investor interest.
“We may list it, but first I’d like to be sure it isn’t just the Tulip Mania of the 21st century,” said Vikram Rangala, COO of ZebPay, referring to one of the most infamous market bubbles and crashes of all time in the 1600s.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies that are either in limited circulation – making them a storehouse of value – or have use cases like smart contracts, Doge’s use cases have been limited to tipping on Twitter and Reddit for quality content.
Copyright © 2021 The Economic Times
