The Best Performing Crypto Is the One That’s the Biggest Joke

(Bloomberg) -- It’s been a brutal bear market for crypto. Since peaking in early January, the entire space has lost around $640 billion. Every time there’s been a brief rally it’s been followed up by relentless selling.

According to OnChainFX, a site that tracks cryptocurrencies, only one coin has seen major gains over the last 30 days, and it happens to be the one that’s the biggest joke of all: Dogecoin. The coin, which was introduced in 2013 as a play on the once popular Doge meme, has surged over 160 percent in about a month.

Why has Dogecoin been on such a tear? Answering that is as difficult as answering why Dogecoin has any in the first place. However, one popular theory floated on Twitter and elsewhere is that its gain has is a result of it having been added to the popular Robinhood app as a currency available for trading in mid-July.

While that may seem like a poor reason to bid up the price of a joke, the ongoing interest in crypto ETFs demonstrates that the ease with which one can access a given coin may be the closest thing there is to "fundamentals" in the space. The easier a coin is to buy and trade, the more money can go into it.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.