Billionaire Elon Musk is one of the most vocal supporters of Dogecoin. Using his platform and notoriety, Musk had been one of the major factors behind the run-up to $0.70 for DOGE in early 2021 before it began to decline. Nevertheless, the billionaire has not faltered in his support for Dogecoin and continues to be very open about his position on it. Recently, the ‘Dogefather’ revealed why he had invested in the meme coin and began to promote it.

For The Employees

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, the SpaceX CEO opened up about the reason he had gotten into the meme coin in the first place. Musk who had suddenly begun to shill Dogecoin in early 2021 said during the interview that he had actually gotten into Dogecoin because of SpaceX and Tesla employees, two companies on which he serves as CEO.

He revealed that it was actually the factory workers on the floor that had told him and asked him to support it. “I just had a lot of people who are not that wealthy, who have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin,” Musk said. “So I’m responding to those people. Just people that work in the factory of SpaceX or Tesla, they’ve asked me to support Dogecoin.”

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Moving forward, the billionaire also stated that he continues to hold and support Dogecoin. This comes despite a massive lawsuit being filed against Musk for being involved in an alleged scheme that was to pump the price of the meme coin and then dump it.

Musk’s support of the meme coin has also transcended just posting about it on Twitter. Tesla, the world’s leading electric vehicle brand, is currently accepting Dogecoin as payment for merchandise, and Musk has revealed in the past that SpaceX will begin accepting DOGE payments at some point.

DOGE declines to $0.071 | Source: DOGEUSD on TradingView.com

Dogecoin Whale Volume Grows

Despite the price of the meme coin declining, the interest in Dogecoin has not waned. The altcoin has taken a huge hit going into the bear market as expected. However, its volume continues to climb especially with the piqued interest from whales.

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Data shows that whale transaction volumes have grown more than 100% in the last 24 hours alone. These transactions which carry a minimum of $100,000 in DOGE jumped from their previous day’s number of about 100 to reach 222 on the last day. This translates to a 118% change in the last day and as such, there have been over $1.12 billion in transaction volumes from these large whales alone.

This renewed interest shows that all hope is not lost for the meme coin. As long as these numbers continue, then recovery could be in the future of the altcoin. The price has not responded favorably to this though. While there has been a small uptick, it had quickly resumed its downtrend and is currently trading at $0.0713 at the time of this writing.

Featured image from CoinMarketCap, chart from TradingView.com

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A 35-year-old former supermarket warehouse manager who made an $8,000 bet on shiba inu at the start of the year is now enjoying his retirement thanks to the meme coin’s stunning rally.

Rob, who is from northern England, told Fortune he dabbled in cryptocurrencies to supplement his $68,000 yearly salary so he could create a better life for his partner and their son.

Unexpectedly, he came across shiba inu, which was founded in August 2020. And upon reading the coin’s 28-page white paper, he was all in.

“After reading that, I was hooked,” Rob, who declined to revealed his last name, told Fortune. “I just believed the words.”

He then decided to invest $8,000 in shiba inu slowly and intended for his holdings to grow to tens of thousands of dollars.

But the coin’s stunning rally in May, which pushed its price 1,200 times what it was worth in February, multiplied Rob’s holdings beyond his imagination.

“I come from quite a poor background. I could never have even fantasized about having this much money,” Rob said, adding that he checked his account every hour for a time to make sure the gains did not vanish. “But it wasn’t gone. It wasn’t a dream.”

He withdrew $500,000 worth of shiba inu coin from the exchange and deposited the sum into his bank account, he said. This was around the time he quit his job.

Then another surge in the coin’s price further catapulted Rob’s windfall to over $1 million, according to documents reviewed by Fortune. Elsewhere, he invested in other coins in the shiba inu ecosystem like leash.

While Rob’s situation is rare, anecdotes like this have grown in frequency thanks to the wild swings in crypto prices and the emergence of various new meme tokens.

Shiba inu, an ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin, has rallied 99 million percent over the last 12 months and briefly became the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market cap this month, even surpassing dogecoin at one point. It’s now ranked 11, according to data by CoinMarketCap.

While digital assets are known to have passionate communities behind them, shiba inu’s has proven to be one of the most zealous. And this is exactly why Rob stuck around, he said.

“I made three very close friends [through Shiba], and we formed a little group,” he told Fortune, adding how even the anonymous project lead, who goes by Shytoshi Kusama on Twitter, was responsive to him. That was something he did not experience in other coin communities.

Still, it remains to be seen whether meme tokens, which are often driven by jokes and social media, are here to stay. Experts have said many of them will die down.

But for Rob and other shiba inu supporters Insider has spoken with, what sets shiba inu apart is its use cases, such as the shibarium blockchain and non-fungible token artworks, among others.

“I am emotionally attached, which can be quite dangerous in crypto environments,” he told Fortune. “But we believe so strongly that there is more to achieve with shiba.”