BofA Securities head of cryptocurrency and digital assets Alkesh Shah said he has “no idea” why Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) has a market value of $36 billion.
What Happened: In a webinar hosted by Columbia Business School on March 16, Shah was talking about the bank’s digital asset research evaluation of the top 10 crypto tokens.
“I look at Dogecoin that has no use case, and I have no idea why it’s $36 billion. I have no explanation," he said.
“Doesn’t mean it [DOGE] can’t be. If people want to own it, they can."
Shah’s comments came as part of a broader discussion around the growing interest in altcoins, or coins besides Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), and their potential to capture more market share.
According to Shah, more people are looking at Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), and Polkadot (CRYPTO: DOT) as their use cases expand.
Other Insights: Bank of America also gauged retail interest by analyzing the number of mentions of crypto assets on social media platforms like Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) and Reddit.
Its analysts found that Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) saw the largest amount of interest with a monthly increase of 392% month over month, followed by DOGE which saw a 42% increase over the same period.
“Shiba Inu, which you know really took off, again has no operating system real capabilities, which is smart contract capabilities, had the most mentions and the most market value,” he said.
Why It Matters: Despite some industry watchers’ perceived lack of utility, meme coins like DOGE and SHIB have often been some of the first crypto tokens to be accepted as a payment method from major retailers and companies.
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) accepts DOGE as payment for its online merchandise while major theatre chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE: AMC) began accepting SHIB and DOGE earlier this month.
Price Action: It is worth noting that Dogecoin had a market cap of $16.1 billion, as per data from CoinMarketCap. The meme-based cryptocurrency was trading at $0.122 at the time of writing, down 0.13% in the last 24 hours.
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