After a historic rally in 2021 and subsequent market drop in 2022, many investors are wondering whether Dogecoin will go back up. Well, that could very well be the case, as technical indicators support the notion that DOGE will increase in value in the next year.

However, in order for Dogecoin to reach or even surpass its previous highs, several Dogecoin and broader market-specific factors will have to align – including new protocol developments and renewed interest from investors.

In this article, we’ll touch upon Dogecoin’s price history, examine potential catalysts behind DOGE’s growth and look into what the technical indicators are predicting for the future.

Dogecoin price history

Dogecoin (DOGE) is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2013 by software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus as a parody of Bitcoin inspired by a popular Shiba Inu meme (which was later sold as an NFT). While the project quickly cultivated a community of ardent supporters, it was considered a fringe investment at best for most of its existence.

It wasn’t until 2021 that Dogecoin went mainstream, primarily due to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk publicly expressing support for the meme coin. This catapulted its price to new heights, as DOGE gained about +15,000% between January and May 2021. The price of DOGE ultimately reached an all-time high of $0.7386 on May 8th, elevating the project to a market cap of $82 billion.

After the impressive run, Dogecoin lost roughly -90% over the next two years. However, many investors are hoping that Dogecoin could return to its former price peak and pull off another massive price rally. 

In the following sections, we’ll examine how likely it is for Dogecoin to go back up in price.

Will DOGE go back up? Examining potential growth catalysts

There are several reasons worth examining that could help fuel fresh positive DOGE price movements, including a potential transition to Proof-of-Stake and opportune market conditions.

Keep in mind that those expecting a definitive answer as to whether “will DOGE ever go back up,” won’t get that here. The cryptocurrency markets are constantly evolving and all we can do is try to make educated guesses.

Transition to Proof-of-Stake

One of the most exciting prospects for those investing in Dogecoin is a potential transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Since its launch, Dogecoin has been using Proof-of-Work (PoW) to reach a consensus about the state of its ledger – just like Bitcoin.

The major benefit of a PoS transition would be the massive reduction in energy consumption. For example, after Ethereum transitioned to PoS last year, its energy consumption reduced by over 99%.

The energy efficiency could make Dogecoin more attractive to environmentally conscious investors and bring renewed interest to the meme coin. Beyond energy savings, a transition to PoS could possibly make the Dogecoin network a bit faster and less expensive to use.

Dogecoin’s PoS transition has been in the rumor mills for years, with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin calling for Dogecoin to move to PoS last September. 

Selkis: Should all networks move to PoS?

"I'd say should ... as PoS matures I would expect it to increase in legitimacy over time. I hope @zcash moves over and I am hopeful @dogecoin moves to PoS soon," — VB#mainnet2022

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) September 23, 2022

Dogecoin CoreFund

While most investors don’t necessarily buy Dogecoin due to its technological innovations, but rather as a meme investment with growth potential, there could be some changes brewing on the development side of things.

Last December, the Dogecoin Foundation launched Dogecoin CoreFund, a development fund designed to incentivize and distribute 5,000,000 DOGE among developers. With these incentives, more talented developers could be joining the Dogecoin project and potentially see it expand beyond a rudimentary peer-to-peer (P2P) payment system – which could go a long way toward improving Dogecoin’s investment prospects. 

Elon Musk could help spark a new rally

It’s very difficult to imagine a Dogecoin rally without Elon Musk’s involvement. The Tesla billionaire has on numerous occasions stated that Dogecoin is his favorite crypto and was instrumental in promoting it to a broad international audience during the 2021 bull run.

In addition, Musk helped increase the utility of Dogecoin by accepting it as one of the payment methods when buying Tesla merchandise last year. He also floated the idea of supporting Dogecoin on Twitter after his $44 billion takeover of the social media giant.

If Musk rolls out support for DOGE on Twitter, we could easily see the currency pulling off another rally and potentially even breaking its previous all-time high and reaching the $1 price target.

A new crypto bull market

Arguably the most important factor that will determine Dogecoin’s future success is the performance of the broader crypto market. While the catalysts listed above are certainly important, they won’t have much of an impact on the price of Dogecoin as long as the crypto industry is in a downturn. The most likely way we'll see a resurgence in the price of Doge is when the next crypto bull run comes around.

On the bright side, bear markets are often a period of great opportunity as buying DOGE, or investing in other cryptos during downturns can be especially rewarding in the long term. You can learn more by giving our Is crypto a good investment article a read.

Dogecoin price prediction for 2023-2024

According to the Dogecoin price prediction on CoinCodex, we can expect to see the DOGE price to decline very slowly until the end of 2023. However the Dogecoin price forecast turns much more positive at the start of 2024, as it's expecting DOGE to go on a rally culminating at a price of about $0.26 in February 2024. If this happens, the Dogecoin price at the peak of this rally would be more than 4x higher than the current price of DOGE (roughly $0.06).

However, the DOGE price forecast is much less optimistic over a longer time period. If we take a look at the Dogecoin price prediction for 2030, we can see that the algorithm currently expects Dogecoin to trade below its current price in 2030. While some opportunities for DOGE investors to take profit are expected, the current forecast is expecting an overall negative trend in the Dogecoin price.

The bottom line: So, will DOGE go back up?

Dogecoin’s future performance hinges primarily on the success of the broader crypto market – it’s very difficult to imagine DOGE doing well while other assets are doing poorly, and vice versa. Still, there are several Dogecoin-specific factors that could help boost the coin’s value and perhaps even help it return to the 2021 levels (again, if the broader market conditions improve).

If you are interested in other investment opportunities other than DOGE, check out our selection of cryptos that could explode in 2023. On the other hand, if you are not comfortable with risky and volatile investments, you can check the selection of the best long-term crypto assets instead.