Is Dogecoin nothing but another crypto pump-and-dump?

Eccentric billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has raised serious concerns about the bitcoin / crypto craze in the past. But Cuban recently made a 180-degree turnaround in terms of cryptocurrencies, claiming that if he started a business today, it would focus the business on blockchain technology, NFTs, and smart contracts. But don't make a mistake. Cuban does not endorse the usual crypto suspects like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or Ripple. Instead, he throws his weight behind a rather obscure altcoin that hasn't even cracked a dollar a piece - Dogecoin. Dogecoin has another great supporter - Tesla Inc.'s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who recently, through a series of cryptic tweets, encouraged his followers to "hodl" DOGE. Dogecoin has also received recent boosts from rock star Gene Simmons and rap legend Snoop Dogg. Forget the bitcoin rally; Dogecoin is up 2,400% in a month with Mark Cuban revealing that the Dallas Mavericks are now the largest Dogecoin trader in the world. This insane rally means a Dogecoin is currently trading at $ 0.05687, with a fully diluted market cap of $ 7.3 billion, making it the 14th most valuable cryptocurrency. That's pretty impressive for a cryptocurrency created to satirize the hundreds of altcoins that have tried to copy Bitcoin's success. Many of the altcoins in circulation today originated in the early 2010s when hordes of people tried to create their own magical internet money. Their methodology was simple: copy the bitcoin software, change a few details here and there, and then bring a new coin to market that you can exchange for bitcoins. Dogecoin was created in 2013 at the height of the first major Bitcoin bubble as a slightly tweaked copy of Litecoin, which was itself a slightly tweaked copy of Bitcoin. Dogecoin was originally intended as a joke cryptocurrency that takes its name from the Shiba Inu "doge" internet meme: a picture of a dog speaking in Comic Sans script. The idea behind dogecoin was to have fun and be silly with an ultracheap cryptocurrency - which explains why dogecoin remains dirt cheap despite the massive rally. And just like the infamous GameStop short squeeze debacle a few weeks ago, Dogecoin fans gathered on the Reddit forum / r / dogecoin, where they would tip each other's Dogecoins for amusing comments. And, strangely, just like GameStop, dogecoin seems like another massive pump-and-dump scheme. On January 19 - around the time the GameStop mania began - rapper Soulja Boy recorded a cameo promotional video for Dogecoin and even talked about his cryptocurrency portfolio on Twitter. On Jan. 28, a Twitter user by the name of "WSBChairman" selected Dogecoin as the next potential asset to pump, and the Reddit forum followed with the Dogecoin price skyrocketing. Shortly after, Elon Musk, a larger-than-life tech CEO and obsessive Twitter user, tweeted a copied magazine cover called DOGUE and wrote "$ DOGE" on his Twitter bio, causing the Dogecoin prize to reappear Height shot up. TSLA has been in a strong downtrend since Musk revealed the company bought $ 1.5B worth of Bitcoin, though the sell-off could be part of a sector-wide correction.