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Open interest on Dogecoin options topped $4 billion over the weekend—the highest mark ever for the top meme coin.
On Saturday, crypto futures traders had $4.06 billion worth of bets on the meme coin, CoinGlass data shows. That’s a new high for the asset. The figure has since dipped to $3.6 billion, as of Monday.
Of that number, the majority of the traders are betting on the price of the asset to drop in the future, CoinGlass shows, with $1.9 billion in “shorts” contracts waiting to expire.
Open interest refers to the amount of contracts that have not yet been settled by traders. In the derivatives markets, traders bet money on the future price of cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin (DOGE).
Earlier this month, following Donald Trump's presidential election win, open interest on Dogecoin neared a record $2.75 billion.
But the money keeps flowing. The surge in bets Saturday came one day after speculators quickly snapped up the asset—leading to a price jump Friday—following news that the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was planning on introducing payments to his social media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter).
The entrepreneur has previously spoken about how the cryptocurrency could be useful for payments on the website.
Interest in the asset has surged this year since Musk started talking about the meme coin again and even named a government agency D.O.G.E.— the Department of Governmental Efficiency. He will lead the department with billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy when President-elect Donald Trump becomes leader of the U.S. again in January.
Musk, who became a staunch Republican and backer of Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House, has spoken about DOGE being his favorite cryptocurrency for years—usually leading to big price surges.
The coin was originally created as a joke, but it now commands substantial trading action on the crypto markets and is the seventh-biggest digital asset by market cap. It has spawned thousands of copycat coins and a buoyant meme coin market. Meme coins are cryptocurrencies based on internet jokes and memes. They are known for their volatility.
DOGE is now priced at just over $0.39, according to CoinGecko—a nearly 9% dip over the past day. Even so, in the past month, it has surged over 185%.
Edited by Andrew Hayward