Dogecoin's price has dropped to little under $0.07 in the last week, down 13% from the previous week, and down 6% from the previous day. The notoriously unstable meme coin has fallen this week because to worries about potential changes to the cryptocurrency's current, energy-intensive proof-of-work mining process.
On social media, there have been rumors that Dogecoin may convert to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake architecture, similar to Ethereum's long-awaited merger in September. One of Dogecoin's main engineers has denied that any significant change is about to occur. Dogecoin is still the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization (market cap), after Bitcoin, which has a $316 billion market cap.
This week is when the Ethereum merger is supposed to happen. In this episode of Decrypt- O's, Kate Irwin explains the Bellatrix upgrade and the shadow fork, Dan Roberts predicts the effect Ethereum's switch to proof of stake will have on Bitcoin's energy use PR issue (with additional commentary from Dan Held from the gm podcast), and Sander Lutz asks citizens on the street in Hollyweird if they are aware of and concerned about the merge.
Although DOGE has lost 61% of its value over the past year, it has beaten certain other significant cryptocurrencies in 2022. For instance, Solana has lost nearly 95% of its value since the start of the year, partly as a result of the FTX contagion. It briefly left the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap on Thursday.
