Dogecoin Price Up 975% After Elon Musk's Tweet, WallStreetBets' Pump

Meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin surged to as high as $0.080 Friday after it caught the attention of the public who were either part of the GameStop saga or those observing the news events surrounding the company's stock price.

Dogecoin was trading at around $0.007 for most of the month, but on Thursday, it suddenly went up 429%, increasing to 0.036 in just one day. On Friday, the cryptocurrency went as high as $0.087, another 138% increase. The cryptocurrency soared 975% in two days.

Originally created as a joke, Dogecoin's price performance on Friday briefly made it the seventh most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, eclipsing Link and even Litecoin. More than $12 million worth of Dogecoin was traded in the previous 24 hours, Coindesk reported.

It appears that the traders on Reddit's WallStreetBets group, as well as a TikTok post from Carole Baskin, who starred in Netflix's "Tiger King," could be causing the price increase.

Due to increasing volatility, some brokerage services like Robinhood had restricted trading on video game retailer GameStop and other volatile shares. Because of that, some traders moved to cryptocurrency, specifically Dogecoin hoping that their price would increase in the future.

According to The Tie, a data provider, $DOGE has set a record with the most number of tweets about a cryptocurrency over a 24-hour period, beating Bitcoin's record from Jan. 2 and Dec. 22, 2017.

The price may have also been affected by Tesla founder Elon Musk, who previously changed his Twitter bio to "former CEO of Dogecoin." On Friday, he posted a picture of a dog, a likely reference to Dogecoin's recent surge.

Musk's tweets could send stock prices flying and Dogecoin has benefitted from the billionaire a number of times. Last December, Musk tweeted "One word: Doge." Just after that, the price of Dogecoin went up 20%. He had also tweeted a big wave overflowing a city, with the big wave representing Dogecoin.