NFT mania breaks new grounds as DOG coin hits $550mn overnight

The frenzy for digital artwork is setting new milestones as one of the Internet’s most popular meme gets turned into a nearly $550 million worth asset overnight.

The DOG coin, a fraction of the non-fungible tokens (NFT) depicting the famous Doge meme, has doubled in value in less than 24 hours, the data from CoinGecko shows. This makes it one of the most valuable NFTs yet.

PleasrDAO, the art conglomerate that bought NFT in June for about $4 million, launched a partial ownership offer in the form of $DOG. The image of the Shiba Inu breed dog from Japan gave rise to Dogecoin, the prank cryptocurrency that soared to $95 billion earlier this year.

The DOG coin, with 17 billion in existence, each worth about 3 cents and about a fifth is in circulation, while 55 percent is owned by the original buyer. All these are signs of enhanced market demand, after the total NFT volume on OpenSE increased more than 10-fold to $3 billion last month. 

The increasing market volume gives provision for critics who see massive pump-and-dump risks throughout the industry, where success is primarily driven by social-media hype and ownership is sometimes concentrated in the hands of a few holders.

Even though the asset is unique by definition, traders can now bet on shares of fractional tokens, or NFTs, that are traded on popular decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and SushiSwap. In other words, owning a $DOG coin is like buying a piece of artwork that one can trade on the Nasdaq.

In another case of NFT mania, the latest Internet favorite is Loot (for adventurers), a collection of images of texts naming a random assortment of items in video games, anything from gloves to a dragon’s crown. Now the fourth most actively traded collection on the OpenSea exchange, Loot Chain has seen its average price rise from around 0.07 ETH a week ago to 22.1 ETH, or around $87,715.

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