Dogecoin (DOGE): Why I Sold and Why I Think It Is Finished

I think Dogecoin is finished as an investment, and I sold the DOGE I held. My whole portfolio is in ICP now. That is my opinion, not financial advice, and I am not a financial advisor. But if you are holding Dogecoin or thinking about buying it, you deserve to see the reasoning behind my view, and you should check every number I mention yourself.

The core argument is simple. Dogecoin is a copy of a copy: it was forked from Litecoin, which was forked from Bitcoin, and I cannot find much fundamental innovation in it. It is mostly used for sending transactions, it has no smart contracts, so there is no DeFi or NFTs on it, and when I run it through my CryptoTechCap.com site it answers six out of a hundred on what a chain should be able to do to be genuinely useful. In my July 2026 post, Dogecoin is Finished, I point to a market cap of about $11 billion while roughly a million dollars of new DOGE is created every day through proof-of-work mining, with supply inflation around three and a half percent. Transaction counts in the tens of thousands a day are not the kind of growth you would expect if the network effect were working.

My view did not appear all at once. Both of my June 2026 posts about Dogecoin were published on June 17. The first, Dear Dogecoin Holders: Why I Sold and What I Hold Instead, argues from opportunity cost: if Dogecoin is one of many coins you could hold, what is the reason to hold it? My answer was that ICP has the best technology, and that small new meme coins, not large old ones, are where I would look for gains. The second, Why I Sold My DOGE in 2023, tells the same story from my own side. I got in on the Elon Musk hype, then got rid of my coins when I compared Dogecoin with ICP and could not see why I would keep holding it.

The July post is where the view hardened. I stopped describing Dogecoin as a coin I would not hold and started calling it finished. The new points were the ongoing mining issuance, the merged mining that ties its security to Litecoin, the lack of new development, and the idea that Dogecoin has become one of many cult coins that people hold without much thought. I also argued that the best days for a coin like this are behind it, and that many holders are mostly waiting to exit at any profit. That is a harsh view, and I hold it with the bias of someone who holds tens of thousands of ICP and is all in on that chain. I am aware of the criticisms people make of ICP too, and I would rather you weigh both sides than take my word for either.

Here is what you will find below. Under this opening there is a contents list, then the three posts in full, newest first, so you can read the July argument before the June reasoning. If you want a method for checking any coin before you buy it, see How to Research a Crypto Before You Buy. For how I think about holding coins you should not hold, see Holding the Wrong Crypto, and for why I hold ICP, see the ICP hub.

If you hold Dogecoin and want a second opinion on your position, you can get a personal video review from me at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/, where I will give you my honest read on your specific coin.

Dogecoin is Finished

From my video published July 10, 2026.

Dogecoin is finished. And I don't want you to lose money on this without understanding what a bad situation this is to be holding this coin. This is not financial advice — I'm not a financial advisor; this is my analysis and my opinion. I'm all in on ICP because it provably has the absolute best technology in crypto, which is why I focus on it completely. And when you look at Dogecoin's technology, it's nearly utterly useless in today's environment.

Tech That Can Hardly Do Anything

On top of that, the market cap for this is $11 billion, and yet the tech can hardly do anything. It was created from Bitcoin and Litecoin, and there's a million dollars every day of new Dogecoin created through proof-of-work mining. This is not a good setup for you to make money. It means a million dollars of new money has to come into Dogecoin — well, not quite, with leverage and derivatives. But despite everything we've seen with Elon Musk pushing Dogecoin with all the memes, and it being one of the oldest, longest-lasting meme coins, there's just nowhere to go from here, because all the excitement is in new meme coins.

Old Meme Coins Don't Age Well

Nothing tends to age worse than old meme coins. They have these lifeless pumps. There's nothing real there. There's a blockchain that is barely used, with almost no reason to integrate with it except to trade it, hold it, and speculate on it as the price goes up. Meanwhile, you have Internet Computer coming in with the most dominant technology in crypto, offering the very best platform to create meme coins. And you have other platforms like Solana, where people are just cranking out tons of meme coins every day on pump.fun. Every one of those makes Dogecoin less relevant, and everything gets more and more fragmented.

Right now, you hardly have any new money coming into crypto. Crypto retail money is basically dead. At this point, most ordinary people I talk to have no intention of ever buying crypto. They see it for the scam and the fraud that it is. And Dogecoin continues to have three and a half or so percent supply inflation — but for what? What is it accomplishing besides just keeping the blockchain alive? Where are we going from here, except down, on Dogecoin?

Tied to Litecoin

The stable software is based on old Bitcoin-generation code — it's years old, with barely any innovation on it. Dogecoin is still going to have to deal with quantum computing too, just like Bitcoin, and make adjustments that account for that. It's not abandoned, but it's pretty close. Meanwhile, with the merged mining they've combined with Litecoin, there's technical debt behind that. Dogecoin doesn't have an independent security system, so its future is tied to Litecoin — another dead-slash-dying zombie coin continuing on momentum and ignorance. But momentum and ignorance are not going to continue forever. Look at history: people, in most cases, continue to get smarter. And as people get smarter in crypto, Dogecoin becomes more and more irrelevant.

The opportunity for making big gains has passed with Dogecoin. The absolute fantasy future for Dogecoin is getting back to where it was before — and if it did, it'd be at a hundred-and-some billion dollar market cap. How ridiculous would that be? Its all-time high would put it near where Solana and XRP are today, which is ridiculous. So there's no reason to have any expectation of a positive future for Dogecoin at this point.

Users are barely paying for the network either. In the last 24 hours there have only been a few tens of thousands of transactions and a few tens of thousands of active addresses. Keep in mind, the network effect should have fully taken off by now if this was going to go well — but it hasn't. There's been no explosive growth, and you can go to a Dogecoin explorer and look all these stats up yourself, which you ought to do if you're holding the coin. Meanwhile, you've got a million dollars a day in new Dogecoin being created. This is just keeping everything barely afloat. And the more the price plummets, the more mining is unprofitable — and if anything happens with Litecoin, it's all extremely questionable.

Where's the Value?

My question is: where's the value? You had this Dogechain layer two that kind of came around for a little while off the hype, but layer twos have been a vast failure across everything. Dogecoin is merely for sending transactions. It doesn't have smart contracts, which is why when I have my CryptoTechCap.com website analyze it, it answers six out of a hundred on what a chain should be able to do to be genuinely useful. So this is extremely irrelevant going forward. And as far as I'm concerned, if ICP rises and even Bitcoin takes a hit from that — because people realize how powerful technology can be in crypto — I think this stands to go down something like 99%.

Basically the only thing it offers over Bitcoin is that the blocks are a little bit faster. But last time I checked, everybody has a faster blockchain today than Dogecoin. There are huge, huge amounts of Dogecoin that could be dumped at any time. Still, significant amounts of it have just been lost, so the market cap is artificially inflated by that. And then you have people saying Doge could reach a dollar, which is ridiculous based on everything I've already said. All the videos hyping Dogecoin have no substance to them, and are based on the idea that people will continue to be absolutely ignorant fools who lose most of their money in crypto. I don't think it's a good idea to bet on that kind of future, where most people just keep throwing their money into something like Dogecoin.

Because if you ask AI to take an honest look at Dogecoin, these are the kinds of things it's going to tell you — and more. We didn't have AI in 2021 that you could ask to fact-check some coin. And there were a lot of new coins back then that are much older now. We can see that price charts over time tend to perform worse and worse. For altcoins, often their first bull market is their best one, as long as they're not artificially listed like 50 times higher than they should have been — like Internet Computer Protocol was, to rug-pull the project — which Dogecoin didn't have to deal with. I share more honest breakdowns like this one in my Crypto Reviews playlist.

Dogecoin Has Had Its Best Days

So Dogecoin, to me, is a setup where almost all the time you're going to lose money holding it. According to my research and calculations, watching it for over a decade now, Dogecoin has had its best days. Even hoping Elon Musk tweets it again at this point would be ridiculous — and even then, you'd be lucky to get some tiny multiples, as the people holding it are desperate to exit at any kind of profit.

I am betting that people continue to get smarter in crypto. I'm doing everything I can to support that through education — showing people, like on CryptoTechCap.com, what market caps should be if the market was logical — for free. If the market was logical, ICP might be the number one crypto by market cap, which would be a massive move from where it's at today. Bitcoin might still be second, but it'd have a market cap that's something like $195 billion. And Dogecoin, at best, would be lucky to maintain a few billion in this scenario. So with Dogecoin, the way I see it, there's just no way this is going to go well for you.

Tired of Losing Money and Time in Crypto?

And I'm here for the people who are tired of losing money and time in crypto — which is almost everyone in crypto; you lose time and/or money. Even some of you who make money in crypto — if you calculated the time you put in against the amount of money you actually make, most people are doing very poorly. Most people are losing. If you're not making at least a hundred-plus dollars an hour — or maybe you make less, maybe $50 an hour — with every hour you put into crypto, crypto content, and crypto trading, then you're losing. There are better things you could be doing for the world. There's more fun you could be having.

So if you're tired of losing money and time in crypto, join the Jerry Banfield Family. We are here to support you. You can share your portfolio with us and we'll give you very honest feedback — feedback that's there to support you in seeing clearly about each coin. And imagine seeing some coin that you're hyped up on: you post it in the chat, we roast it, and it helps you not buy it. That's really valuable. Not getting into some garbage coin like Dogecoin in the first place is the smartest thing you can do. Because as soon as you buy into some coin like Dogecoin, it creates this confirmation bias.

Dogecoin is just a cult coin at this point, and the cults are infinitely spreading and fragmenting. So the future of cult coins is pretty bad, because there are always new cult coins being created. And then Dogecoin becomes just one of 50 or 100 coins people have in their portfolio that they don't even care about, that eventually they'll liquidate without a lot of thought. So imagine stopping getting in on these in the first place, clearing up your mind, saving your time, making more money, and building a portfolio you can relax with.

Thanks for your time today. I hope I used your time well, and I hope all the time you spend with me is vastly positive in transforming your life, helping you make more money, and giving you a better crypto portfolio.

Dear Dogecoin Holders: Why I Sold and What I Hold Instead

From my video published June 17, 2026.

Dear Dogecoin holders, this is something you will really want to consider if you have any Dogecoin or are thinking about buying Dogecoin. I've been in crypto forever, and I care about you. I want you to have the best investments. I don't want you to miss out on the best opportunities. So none of this is financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor, and I hold tens of thousands of ICP, which I believe is the most advanced blockchain in all of crypto. What I want you to think about is opportunity cost when it comes to your Dogecoin. Is there any better crypto you could be holding instead of Dogecoin? I know there's a lot of hype, and Dogecoin is one of the original meme coins. But let's think this through a little bit.

I'm playing a game I enjoy called Hades 2 in the background to make the content a little more interesting, because I'll be honest, these crypto videos do get repetitive where I'm saying the same things over and over again. But they're especially important to consider. And what's important to consider is: what future does Dogecoin actually have?

Dogecoin is a copy of a copy

The fact is that technically, Dogecoin is a copy of Litecoin, which is itself a copy of Bitcoin. So how well can we really expect a copy of Litecoin, which is a copy of Bitcoin, to perform? Dogecoin has done well off of Elon Musk hyping it up. But how often is that going to keep happening? Big market meme coins don't, in my experience, seem to be the best opportunities anyway. Right now, the best opportunities in meme coins seem to be the small, brand new meme coins, especially if you can launch one yourself.

What can you actually do with the Dogecoin blockchain?

If we look at the technology behind Dogecoin, I see very little potential for utility. The one thing we really need to look at with the Dogecoin blockchain is what you can actually do with it. You can send transactions. And when you send transactions on the Dogecoin blockchain, you generally need a third-party wallet of some sort to do that. So you're not actually interacting with the Dogecoin blockchain yourself. You've got your crypto on something like Coinbase, Tangem, or even a Dogecoin-specific wallet. When I had Dogecoin before, I was using it on my Ledger hardware wallet, and that's a third-party wallet. You're dependent on Ledger to provide that. You're not even directly creating transactions on the blockchain itself without going through a third party.

To me, is that meeting the real definition of crypto? The essence of crypto, the way I see it, is being able to do everything without a third party. And the fact is that almost everybody I see interacting with Dogecoin is doing so through a third party. That means you're using a Ledger hardware wallet, or you're using a crypto exchange wallet. You're not actually going directly through the blockchain.

Now, before the Internet Computer Protocol existed, that might have been reasonable. Well, everybody's doing it the same way, so what's the difference? But the Internet Computer Protocol today allows you to go directly to the blockchain in a web browser URL and create transactions without relying on a third party. So the way I see it, the Dogecoin proof-of-work tech is outdated. The narratives around Dogecoin are outdated. I don't see why you would hold Dogecoin in this era of crypto investing when the blockchain itself is, from the way I see it, mostly irrelevant, because you need that third-party wallet and there are much better technological alternatives. Basically, all you're relying on with Dogecoin at this point is the branding.

A cult coin, and the small ones are where the gains are

What I see is that Dogecoin is mostly a cult coin at this point. But there are practically infinite cult coins, and it's going to be the small new cult coins where you get a lot of the gains, at least from what I've seen so far. So I personally don't see why I'd hold a big market cult coin, and I had Dogecoin before. I just don't see the reason to hold it.

Then there have been Dogecoin Layer 2s. The Internet Computer Protocol has actually set it up so you can now have a Dogecoin Layer 2 on the Internet Computer Protocol. But you need to think about what that means too. The best opportunity for Dogecoin to have success at this point is to rely on Layer 2s to give it more real utility. And in my view, the Internet Computer Protocol is the best one for that. So it comes back to opportunity cost. Why would I have any money in Dogecoin? That's exactly why I don't have any money in Dogecoin. Why would I hold Dogecoin when the Internet Computer Protocol already has the best Layer 2 setup for Dogecoin?

The two futures I see for crypto

The Internet Computer Protocol's tech is so good that there are basically two futures I see happening. In one future, all crypto just becomes centralized. You go through centralized exchanges for everything, you don't really self-custody anything, and you constantly follow whatever the big players want you to hold. In that scenario, crypto becomes mostly pointless. So why would Dogecoin succeed there?

In the second scenario, crypto becomes something real, where you're actually using the blockchain and truly cutting out third parties, not just running on hype and speculation. In that case, the Internet Computer Protocol has the best technology for it. So in that scenario, why would you have Dogecoin either? I don't see why you'd hold Dogecoin in either of the two directions I believe crypto is heading. I genuinely can't think of one good reason to hold Dogecoin at this point.

Again, this isn't financial advice. I'm not telling you what to do. But I talk to people who are holding Dogecoin and are so bullish about it, and I'm left thinking, what is there to be excited about? All I see are narratives. I see hype. I see speculation. What I don't see is real utility for the token itself. I've shared this with the hope that you'll just consider it, and I would not do anything as a result of what I've said. Don't take any action. I'm just telling you my research.

I held Dogecoin last year. I got in on the Elon Musk hype and all of that. And I got rid of it when I compared it to the Internet Computer Protocol and thought, I don't see why I would hold this. There are limited opportunities in crypto to invest, and I don't want to be in anything except the best. If you're not the best, I don't want to be invested in you. And Dogecoin, to me, is obviously a big market meme coin. I don't want a big market meme coin. Small market meme coins are the way to go, in my opinion. If you want to dig deeper into how I think about crypto and investing, you can explore my Crypto Reviews playlist.

I think I've made this pretty clear. I just wanted to put it out there for everybody holding Dogecoin. It's simply something to think about. I'm very aware of all the criticisms people have for the Internet Computer Protocol, and I think it's just as important to be aware of all the criticisms people have for your coin. I'm Jerry Banfield, a full-time YouTuber and streamer, and I appreciate you taking the time to consider this.

Dear Dogecoin Holders: Why I Sold My DOGE in 2023

From my video published June 17, 2026.

Dear Dogecoin crypto holders, if you're holding Dogecoin or you're thinking about buying Dogecoin, this is something you will really want to read, because I've held Dogecoin before. I've seen all the hype, and I want to share some constructive feedback I have about Dogecoin right now that I think is important for you to hear. Keep in mind, I'm not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advice. I also hold tens of thousands of Internet Computer Protocol right now, so that clearly colors my position.

You might ask, well, why did you hold Dogecoin before and why don't you hold it now? I've reviewed thousands of cryptos, and I do at least one crypto review every single day. I care about you as a crypto investor. I want you to be successful with your investing, to both invest to make a better world and to invest so that you become wealthy. Everything I'm saying here you can look up and verify yourself, and I'd encourage you to do exactly that.

The Reality Behind the Narrative

So let's look at the reality of Dogecoin today versus some of the narratives. There's obviously the narrative that Elon Musk has pumped Dogecoin and made Doge what it is. But where do we go from here? The reality, in my view, is that Dogecoin is a copy of a copy. Dogecoin was copied from Litecoin, and Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin. So there's no fundamental innovation that I can see on the part of Dogecoin, which means there's almost no long-term use case for it. And it was started as a joke.

This is one of the top meme coins today, if not the top one. But in my experience, all the money in meme coins is generally made in the small meme coins before they pump, and you have to dump before they dump. To me, there's no future in a large market cap meme coin that literally requires someone like the richest man in the world to pump it in order to get any serious upward action.

No Staking, No Roadmap, No Utility

There's no staking mechanism that I'm aware of, which means if you're holding it, you're just holding it, hoping the price goes up. That doesn't seem like a very good investing strategy to me. On top of that, you've got all these new meme coins coming up that tend to carry all the hype and excitement, whereas I don't see any clear vision for where Dogecoin is going. There's no roadmap. There's no long-term utility plan.

This means that, from what I see, other cryptos like Internet Computer that have the best technology in crypto, along with other cryptos that have the largest communities, a clear roadmap, and very clear use cases, are going to keep taking more and more of the market away from Dogecoin over time. There's also hardly any development happening on the protocol itself, and hardly any building on things like the GitHub. There are no smart contracts, so you can't even do DeFi or NFTs.

In fact, the best outlook for Dogecoin at this point seems to be to build a Layer 2 with Internet Computer Protocol, because then you could bring the technology fully on-chain and give Dogecoin a bit more utility. I tried a Dogecoin Layer 2 before, which was horrible, and it was mostly hosted off-chain anyway. When you look at it, the best possibility you have is to get some adoption from a Layer 2 on something like Internet Computer Protocol. I personally don't see why I'd want to hold Dogecoin instead of Internet Computer Protocol.

The Problem With Infinite Supply

There's also an infinite supply. For something like Internet Computer Protocol that's not a problem, because it has theoretically infinite scalability to build out the whole tech stack of the Internet. But Dogecoin has an infinite supply with no comparable utility behind it. So where are we going from here? Why would you even do anything with a token, or even hold it, when there's more and more of it being created? There's no incentive for a developer to try and do anything with Dogecoin.

You're also in the middle of something that's been heavily influenced by celebrities. To me, you're already in a scenario where this is about as good as it gets. The market cap also seems grossly inflated, because you have some of these old Bitcoin wallets that theoretically could still pull out some of their transactions for Dogecoin and dump that at any time. There's a lot of Dogecoin that, because it's a fork of Litecoin and a fork of Bitcoin, just sits there and doesn't do anything, which makes people think it's bigger than it actually is. It's artificially higher in market cap than the actual transactable supply.

Now, some people would argue that creates scarcity, but scarcity is based on demand versus supply. And almost everybody, from what I can see, is just holding Dogecoin on centralized exchanges anyway, which means those exchanges, if they're not honest, have the ability to sell fake Dogecoin too, which could be absolutely devastating for the price. There's also a small number of wallets that hold a significant portion of all the Dogecoin. So I don't see why, as a regular retail investor, this is something I'd even want to get into. You can't clearly see any great scaling for this in the future either, and the mining resources also appear to be shared with Litecoin.

Where Is the Opportunity?

There are so many potential problems here. But what I don't see is the opportunity. How many times can you count on Elon Musk to push Dogecoin from here? Isn't he burnt out on this himself? Is there any other hype that will ever come from Dogecoin, and if so, how much is it even going to go up? Will it even make up for all the dumping that happens in between? I just see no reason to hold Dogecoin, and that's why I dumped my Dogecoin in 2023.

I don't see why I would hold this compared to Internet Computer, or compared to lots of other investments like a house. To me, this seems very high risk with very low reward potential. Again, this is not financial advice. This is just my opinion, and I wouldn't take any action right after reading this. Just think about what I've said and digest it. Ideally take at least a day, if not more, to think things over before you impulsively transact anything.

The only reason I see people generally holding Dogecoin today is confirmation bias. You bought it before, and you don't want to sell it, because selling means facing the possibility that maybe you didn't make such a good decision buying it in the first place. You don't want to sell at a loss. But to me, I'd rather sell something at a loss and get into something with more opportunity than just sit there trying not to be wrong. Again, this is not financial advice, just my experience. My whole portfolio is in ICP today, and you can find much more of my thinking on investing in my Crypto Reviews playlist. I hope this helps some people holding Dogecoin to at least wake up and reconsider the position.