Dogecoin – ‘Not Elon Musk’ buys DOGE worth $45M leaving many asking…

• An announcement by a top crypto miner was speculated to be powering the purchase.
• The development signaled a departure from Elon Musk-induced movements.

The world’s largest meme token, Dogecoin [DOGE], grabbed headlines recently when a mammoth portion of its supply was grabbed by a wealthy investor.

What happened?

The transaction, dated the 16th of April, showed a whale snapping 300 million DOGE tokens, worth $45 million at prevailing market prices, from no-commission crypto trading platform Robinhood.

The withdrawn funds were then sent away to a wallet, details about which remain unknown as of this writing.

Immediately, speculations about the possible reason for the large purchase began doing the rounds.

No Elon Musk links this time?

MartyParty, a prominent crypto influencer, suggested that the move was in response to a recent announcement by Bitmain, one of the world’s largest crypto mining equipment makers.

The announcement talked about the upcoming release of its Antiminer L9, which would help with mining services for different proof-of-work (PoW) tokens, including DOGE.

As with other things in financial markets, factors influencing an asset’s price are based on market readings and not 100% accurate.

However, the aforementioned potential catalyst provided insights about DOGE’s changing market structure.

The original meme coin, which was endorsed by tech czar Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter) years ago, has grown increasingly entangled with his opinion and developments in firms under his control.

This was a result of lack of fundamentals-driven catalysts for the token.

But investments like the aforementioned ones into DOGE mining could attract more serious investors and result in sustained price increases for the coin.

DOGE gains in 2024

Meanwhile, the total number of DOGE holders continued to increase, rising to 6.61 million at press time, as per AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment data.

Realistic or not, here’s DOGE’s market cap in BTC’s terms

This marked a jump of 38% over the year, and more than 15% year-to-date (YTD).

Source: Santiment

The jump aligned with growing meme coin speculation in the ongoing bull market. DOGE was trading at $0.15 at press time, marking a 68% bump since 2024 began.