Bitfinex, Binance, OKEx Rush to Capitalize on Dogecoin Fever

With dogecoin (DOGE) now up by another 18% in the past 24 hours, exchanges are rushing to capitalize on the fever, launching both spot and futures markets in an effort to extract more money from hopeful investors. (Updated at 13:04 UTC: updates in bold).

The exchanges to announce that they will join the race now is Bitfinex and Binance, which said that they will set up new spot and futures trading pairs, respectively. Another major player, OKEx, said they will provide their users with DOGE margin trading, savings and DOGE/USDT-margined perpetual swap trading.

Bitfinex, however, is listing its own twist of the coin dubbed MegaDogecoin (MDOGE), where 1 MDOGE equals 1 million DOGE (USD 4,651). Binance, meanwhile, said that it will launch the coin as a perpetual futures contract with up to 50x leverage.

Trading in the new pairs should start this Friday on all three exchanges. OKEx also warned swap traders that their website, app, desktop client and API access may be affected due to the listing of the DOGE/USDT swap: “Features such as market quote, order placement, order cancelations, order amendments, margin addition and transfer could be suspended from 03:00 to 03:30 am (UTC) on July 10.”

Following the listing announcements, some community members took to Twitter to discuss them, with some also criticizing the exchanges for offering huge leverage on a highly volatile coin, to largely inexperienced traders.

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto derivatives exchange FTX, revealed that the DOGE futures contract now has the fifth-highest 24-hour trading volume on his exchange, ahead of coins with a much higher market capitalization like XRP and EOS.

For now, it looks like early participants in the pump have made money, with the coin trading up by more than 100% in the past 7 days. However, the crucial question is how long the buying frenzy can last.

Bloomberg quotes Justin Litchfield, Chief Technology Officer at ProChain Capital, a crypto hedge fund, who said that there are two trends at play:

• The hordes of people stuck at home who have been buying stocks on apps like Robinhood and who might now also be dabbling in crypto.
• The other is the repeat phenomenon of DOGE investors getting together to do a “pump and dump for kicks.”

The buzz surrounding dogecoin first started on the popular video sharing app TikTok, where a large number videos urged followers to put USD 25 into dogecoin in an effort to push its price to USD 1.

As of press time on Thursday (12:05 PM UTC), DOGE, ranked 27th by market capitalization, traded at USD 0.004651, and the #dogecoin tag had 8.4 million views on TikTok, with new videos using the hashtag continuing to appear.

DOGE price chart:

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Learn more: As Dogecoin Barks Louder, Tron’s Justin Sun Rides the Focus on TikTok