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Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
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The Dogecoin price is set to reach $10 by US Presidential Inauguration Day on January 20 2025, as momentum builds and bitcoin heads for $100,000.
Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency has exploded in price to $0.0418, doubling in price over seven days. It will continue to fly higher following confirmation that Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, is to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Furthermore, the expected appointment of crypto-friendly business people and administrators to various key roles at federal financial regulators provides another booster rocket.
Crypto-friendly appointments at federal financial regulators coming next?
According to a report by the well-connected Washington Post, Robinhood chief legal, compliance and corporate affairs officer Daniel Gallagher is being considered for the position of chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Existing SEC commissioners Hester ‘crypto mom’ Peirce and Mark Uyeda (both Republican appointees) are also on the list. Both commissioners are known for criticizing the SEC’s ‘regulation through enforcement’ approach to crypto.
Another crypto-friendly name that’s popped up for the SEC role is Chris Giancarlo, formerly of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The crypto industry prefers to be regulated by the CFTC because it would infer that most digital assets are not securities, and Giancarlo is thought to be of a similar mind – having him installed at the SEC would be a positive.
Former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins, who worked with the 2016 Trump transition team, is also being considered for SEC chairman.
Underlining the price-moving potential of the transition personnel moves and the involvement of crypto bigwigs, news that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has been speaking with the Trump team, pushing Ripple’s XRP token price higher in the past 24 hours to $0.7061.
Ripple is involved in a long-running case in which the SEC charges it with selling unregistered securities. The litigation has held back the price of XRP.
There are other crypto folks close to the Trump administration that should be kept in view.
Crypto magnates Marco Santori, chief legal officer at US-based exchange Kraken, and David Bailey of BTC Inc, the company behind the Bitcoin Nashville conference that Trump spoke at earlier this year, were at the Trump election night watch party at Mar-a-Lago.
Not to be left out of mention, Howard Lutnick, the CEO of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, whose company acts as a custodian on behalf of Tether, is co-chair of the presidential transition process.
Assuming Dogecoin takes out $0.73 by printing a new all-time high (ATH) in the next few days, it will put the price within touching distance of the psychologically important $1 level. A 10x move from there to $10 by January 20th is well within the bounds of possibility and might actually be a conservative price prediction.
Dogecoin has 68 days to make good on the $10 price target. Given that it has doubled in price in a week, if it maintains that run rate or slows down a little, $10 is eminently doable.
Elon Musk: ‘America was saved by a squirrel and a meme coin’
Of course, two other momentum drivers will push the $DOGE price higher – Elon Musk’s proximity to the throne and the progression of the Dogecoin roadmap in enabling adoption breakthroughs.
Let’s start with the Elon Musk factor. Alongside billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk, as have noted, will be heading up the DOGE. That’s good for crypto, although it may not be so good for his group of companies if he finds he is spreading himself too thin.
A counter to that is that the bonfire of regulations DOGE will usher is highly likely to benefit his companies, especially Tesla and SpaceX, the latter being the major contractor to the US space agency NASA.
To be clear – and there’s a lot about the Musk appointment that isn’t – DOGE is not an official government department. According to the statement issued by President-elect Donald Trump, the DOGE will “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” and will work with the Office of Management and Budget.
Among other things, that means there will be no need for Musk’s role to be confirmed by the Senate. It was also stated that the ‘department’ will end its work on July 4 2026.
Back in the day, to be precise on July 5 2021, when Elon Musk was a Democratic voter, he appeared on liberal-leaning late-night show Saturday Night Live. In the weeks before he unleashed his comic powers, the expectation of his SNL appearance was credited with propelling the Dogecoin price to its all-time high.
As it turned out, his skit on the satirical show did not mention Dogecoin. Disappointment made itself felt in the coin’s price, which fell precipitously, bottoming out at $0.053 in June 2022.
But this time around the stars are well and truly aligned for sustained crypto take-off, with Musk a central figure in the incoming administration.
That, plus the rest of the team’s pro-crypto tilt and the trifecta of the US government’s executive and legislative bodies in the hands of one party, means there should be no barriers to the swift passage of legislation favorable to the crypto industry.
Although SEC chairman Gary Gensler is in post until 2026, and the president does not have the power to sack him, precedent would require Gensler to resign in the face of an unfriendly president and Congress. Even if Gensler is not ousted, the pro-crypto Congress can easily pass legislation that pulls the rug from under the SEC chairman’s feet.
Regulatory environment aside, there is the prospect of roadmap developments aligning with an emerging adoption-friendly framework.
Musk said he wants to cut a third of the federal budget. That would require massive cuts across government departments. Replacing the pen-pushers could be helped by implementing decentralized networks.
Musk is known for his willingness to try new approaches and take risks. Getting government departments to adopt blockchain solutions, at least in part, would be an opening for the entire industry, including Dogecoin.
However, as things stand, Dogecoin is not looking to be something other than a currency. Nevertheless, the lowering of regulatory barriers and the opening up of government to decentralized networks and privatized forms of money can only spur on the adoption of $DOGE.
Of course, the greatest barrier to the adoption of Dogecoin as a currency would be its volatility.
However, the work by the Dogecoin Foundation to make it easier for developers to build products (Libdogecoin initiative and ongoing Dogecoin Core updates), and the advent of the GigaWallet to make it much easier for developers to integrate payments into platforms could help mitigate the impact of those issues.
Composability is the name of the game – a development environment where components can be made to work together easily and in multiple ways.
Whether or not the new Department of Government Efficiency will pay much attention to Dogecoin doesn’t really matter. Still, it is probably not too far-fetched to imagine a department being created to ‘proof of concept’ the hell out of blockchain for service delivery.
The possibility of being able to pay for some government services with crypto would be a prospect that could send Dogecoin price way beyond $10
With friends in high places, we can expect to see the development work on GigaWallet accelerate and expand, which will, in turn, hasten the arrival of ‘Dogecoin accepted here’ stickers at a retail outlet near you and at your favorite online e-commerce destinations.
The Musk group of companies will give a first indication of where and how fast Dogecoin is moving. Tesla, which accepted Dogecoin for merchandise purchases, can be expected to broaden that out post the arrival of regulatory clarity.
Crypto Bros will soon buy Teslas, not Lambos, with their $DOGE.
Dogecoin alternatives as altcoin season gears up – is Pepe Unchained the next Pepe?
The Dogecoin Foundation plans to introduce a “community proposal process” called Dogecoin Improvement Proposals (DIPs). This process will allow the community to suggest and implement changes to the network.
A new kid on the block is promising to do something similar but going much further.
Brand new meme coin Pepe Unchained ($PEPU) is building a Layer 2 blockchain and launching a full panoply of services to go with it, including a decentralized exchange, striking, block explorer, development grants and a super-fast meme coins launchpad akin to pump.fun but built on its own Ethereum Layer 2 – Pepe’s Pump Pad. This coin could be the next Pepe.
The project has raised $28 million, and the ICO ends in less than 30 days. The presale price goes up in stages, so you can buy now at $0.01279 before the next increase.
And in case you were wondering what the hottest sector in crypto is, it is meme coins, and Coinbase has just confirmed that today by listing Pepe.
Other Dogecoin alternatives include Flockerz, which offers a vote-to-earn mechanism where the token owners earn rewards for taking part in the token’s decision-making process. It is the first meme coin to empower ‘The Flock’ – it puts power in the hands of the token owners, making it the ‘people’s meme coin’. The $FLOCK token is currently on sale for $0.006004.
Another candidate in the meme coins category is Freedum Fighters ($DUM), which is leveraging PolitiFi theme in the light of the US post-election frenzy.
Pepe Unchained and Flockerz can both be bought on top crypto wallet Best Wallet.
Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.
