Is Dogecoin the Best Crypto You Can Buy Right Now?

I'll keep this short: no.

OK, I won't keep it short. Don't expect the answer to change after a deeper dive, though. Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) is absolutely not the best cryptocurrency to buy today.

It is one of the great accidental success stories of the internet age. Back in 2013, two software engineers looked at the crypto gold rush and thought it was a little ridiculous. So they made a coin starring a Shiba Inu with questionable grammar, using the Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) code with a few questionable tweaks. It was satire.

Then people started buying it. Then Elon Musk started tweeting about it, sparking a moonshot in 2021. When he appeared on Saturday Night Live and jokingly called Dogecoin a "hustle," the coin's price crashed.

Dogecoin by the numbers

Dogecoin trades 24/7, but the easiest way to line it up against stocks is the REX-Osprey DOGE ETF. The fund, the largest Dogecoin ETF on the market, turned 1 year old on Sept. 18. Happy birthday, little fund; it's been a rough first year.

As of Sept. 25, DOJE is down 57.6% over the past 12 months. The share price sits 64.5% below its 52-week high. The results track Dogecoin's price moves closely, with the addition of an annual fee ratio of 1.5%.

There has been a recent bounce. DOJE gained 28.2% over the last quarter, 14.8% over the last month, and 10.8% in the past week alone. Anyone tempted by that rally should keep it in context. Even after the run, the fund would need to nearly triple to get back to last year's peak. A beta of 1.78 also means this asset amplifies broader market moves in both directions.

The ETF nobody's trading

Yes, Dogecoin has exchange-traded funds (ETFs) now. It has five, in fact, including a 2x leveraged version from 21Shares for folks who find regular Dogecoin too calm. I'm told these people exist, and the average trading volume is more than zero dollars per day.

It's not far above non-existent trading levels, though. DOJE has $13.1 million of assets under management (AUM), which is lunch money by Wall Street standards. The fund averages about $247,000 in daily trading. Apple trades about $744,000 every second.

Maybe it's unfair to compare a tiny Dogecoin ETF to one of the most-traded stocks on the planet, but the leading Bitcoin ETF moves about $2.2 billion in daily trading value. That's nearly 9,000 times DOJE's daily dollar volume.

Dogecoin development exists, but it's limited

To be fair, Dogecoin isn't abandoned software. The Dogecoin Foundation and community developers are working on several fronts.

There's Libdogecoin, a toolkit for building Dogecoin payments into other software. GigaWallet does the backend plumbing for platforms that want to accept the coin. There are lighter node options, experimental quantum-resistant transactions, and some community staking proposals. There's even RadioDoge, which sends Dogecoin transactions over radio waves. I think the last one is kind of cool.

That's real work, and good for them. But Dogecoin isn't keeping up with the serious crypto giants.

• Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins and a growing base of institutional holders.
• Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) hosts a large ecosystem of decentralized finance applications and stablecoins.
• Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) has won over developers who want fast, cheap transactions for consumer apps.

Dogecoin brings an unlimited supply of puppy memes and about 5 billion new coins every year. Nobody has set a cap on Dogecoin's supply, resulting in inflation.

The hype is fading, too

Dogecoin's price has always tracked public attention more closely than any fundamental driver. That attention is drying up.

Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Trends puts U.S. search interest in Dogecoin at a multi-year low. Interest jumped after the 2024 election, when the incoming administration announced a new Department of Government Efficiency, whose acronym borrowed the coin's name.

Searches peaked a couple of months later, when Musk arrived in Washington to lead the effort in January 2025. Today's interest sits around 3% of that peak, roughly a quarter of the five-year average.

A catalyst lands, search volume surges, the price jumps, and then the crowd moves on. Search interest and Dogecoin's price aren't exact matches, but the big moves line up when you chart them.

Image source: Getty Images.

Very hype, much fade. Wow.

Dogecoin trails Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on nearly every measure that matters to serious investors: scarcity, utility, developer activity, institutional interest, and liquidity.

Those looking for crypto exposure have better options. A small Dogecoin position can be a fun way to take part in crypto culture, as long as it's money you can afford to lose.

I promised to keep this short, and I didn't. The answer never changed, so TL;DR: no.

Anders Bylund has positions in Alphabet, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.