Ethereum and major altcoins have surged over the past week with popular meme coin Dogecoin posting the biggest gains among the top 20 tokens by market value. 

DOGE has jumped by nearly 36, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko to recently trade at nearly $0.27 a coin. 

The original meme coin and Elon Musk favorite is close to its six-month high, having last traded at this level in mid-February. 

Grayscale‘s Head of Research Zach Pandl told Decrypt that the surge in interest in the coin stemmed more from investors‘ renewed taste for risk than any other factor. 

"The gain in Dogecoin‘s price this month is broadly in-line with other altcoins, and reflects an increase in crypto trader risk taking rather than any change in this project‘s fundamental value," he said. 

Pandl added that the passage of stablecoin legislation in the U.S. was helping markets at large, including meme coins. President Trump last week signed the GENIUS Act stablecoin into law last week, which firmly cements regulating the digital tokens. 


And Katie Talati, head of research at Arca, told Decrypt that following major gains from Bitcoin and Ethereum, investors now may be turning spare cash into alts. 

"Typically, when major tokens move in price, investors tend to lock in profits and shift their capital into smaller assets with lower market caps and less trading volume," she said. 

"Recently, tokens popular among retail investors, such as XRP, ADA, and DOGE, have been on the rise. It‘s important to note that DOGE is widely available across most crypto exchanges, which helps it benefit when retail investors re-enter the market."

But other factors might be at play, too. On Monday Nasdaq-listed Bit Origin announced a $500 million DOGE treasury strategy, after an initial $40.5 million buy. 

The crypto miner is following other publicly traded companies by buying digital assets as a way to increase the value of its stock. 

DOGE last year rallied ahead of the U.S. presidential election when Elon Musk started talking about the coin again. Created initially as a joke, DOGE gained a cult following when the world‘s richest man started pumping the coin on Twitter (now X). 

The coin has since surged in market cap and a number of asset managers have applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for spot Dogecoin exchange-traded funds. Bloomberg analysts have predicted that those funds have a 90 probability of receiving the regulator‘s green light.

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