Why Dogecoin Is Up 20%

Why Dogecoin Is Up 20%

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – For Ahmad BinDawood, last year’s share offering in the eponymous Saudi grocery business was a chance to shape his legacy at the family firm he’s worked at since the age of eight, while cementing a $3.1 billion fortune built over the decades by his father and uncles.As the October public offering of BinDawood Holding Co. got underway, details emerged of some $76 million in previously undisclosed loans made by the Saudi company to family members. In a departure from the traditional secrecy associated with the kingdom’s family firms, Jeddah-based BinDawood revealed everything, put the IPO on hold and gave buyers the chance to take their money back.As the loans were quickly repaid, the sale resumed and eventually raised about $500 million for the family, attracting $29 billion in bids along the way.“We have to be very transparent with investors,” BinDawood said in an interview in Riyadh last month. “If there is any disclosure at any time that we need to make, we will go ahead and do it. So we took this on the shoulder and decided to announce it.”The success of the IPO has helped establish BinDawood, 37, as one of a new breed of Saudi executives rising within a corporate world that was largely off-limits to foreigners until a few years ago. What’s more, it has made him emblematic of a drive to shake up traditional ways of doing business, dovetailing with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s goal of transforming the oil-rich kingdom into a regional business hub.That mold-breaking character can even be seen inside BinDawood stores. The past few months have seen the company doing prominent Valentine’s Day and Easter promotions, a move unthinkable just a few years ago in a country that has historically adhered to a strict Wahhabist interpretation of Islam.Prince Mohammed’s commitment to reshaping the economy isn’t all working in BinDawood’s favor. A sudden decision to triple value added tax last year hit consumer spending. Higher customs duties and fees on expatriates are driving up costs for Saudi firms, too. And all at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has been stoking unemployment.“We remain cautious of near-to-mid term growth across the consumers space as market size shrinks on potential expat depopulation,” said Mehwish Zafar, a senior equity analyst at Arqaam Capital in Dubai who has a “hold” recommendation on the shares. Like-for-like sales growth will probably be negative until at least 2022, he said, with growth only coming from new store openings or acquisitions.Shares in BinDawood jumped more than 30% in the days immediately after the sale. They have since slipped back, showing as of Thursday a gain of about 11.5% from the listing price.It’s a performance that has helped buttress the family’s bid to diversify into other assets while strengthening the core business, a goal identified by Ahmad BinDawood as key to avoiding the kind of strife his father feared might undermine the business as it passed to a new generation.“The majority of family businesses don’t survive the transition to the third generation, and that’s something that concerned my father a lot,” BinDawood said.Pilgrims ProgressThe rise of the BinDawood business has been some 40 years in the making. Once a small-time vendor of Arabian perfumes and groceries to pilgrims visiting the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina, it is now a nationwide concern spanning supermarkets and hypermarkets, hotels and distribution centers. The grocery business alone employs more than 10,000 people across 74 stores.Ahmad BinDawood’s own destiny was sealed as soon as his father, Abdulrazzag BinDawood graduated in the 1980’s from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Riyadh. Instead of following his peers into the oil industry, he decided to join his brothers Ismail and Abdullah in their burgeoning retail trade.Which is why Ahmad found himself on the front line at such a young age. At just eight, he was helping to sell items to the pilgrims during his school holidays, envious of friends who were away avoiding Saudi Arabia’s scorching summers.“Our friends were traveling and off enjoying themselves and sometimes we would would ask: why not us?” BinDawood said. “But that experience built the passion in us to stay in the business that our father and our uncles built.”A decision to push into online shopping and delivery helped prepare the firm for lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, but couldn’t outweigh the hit from the absence of religious tourists who were prevented from entering the kingdom for much of the year. While profit climbed almost 7% last year, it had slumped more than 53% in the fourth quarter as Saudi Arabia reimposed travel restrictions.BinDawood is still optimistic that shoppers will return as travel resumes, though how quickly pilgrims come back to Saudi Arabia in anything like their previous numbers remains uncertain.Next up may be the purchase of a rival grocery chain to expand into neighboring countries, BinDawood said. At the same time, the IPO proceeds will help further develop the BinDawood Group family office, which Ahmad’s father is now running. That fortune, which is split across several family members, is estimated at about $3.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.“The IPO had two main angles to it – sustainability and continuity of the business first, and second the diversification for the family,” he said. “We are in the process of building the family office and bringing in the right talent.”More family businesses are likely to follow in BinDawood’s footsteps. The IPO of Saudi Aramco in 2019, which many Saudis never thought they would see, “has been a massive driver in motivating families to take their operating businesses public to help grow their enterprises and generate new wealth,” said Tayyab Mohamed, co-founder of London-based family office staffing firm, Agreus Group.For all the challenges, Ahmad BinDawood is optimistic, citing his life-long involvement in the business as a foundation for success.“Retail is embedded in our DNA now,” he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Tesla Motors (TSLA) - What’s Going On With Voyager Token, Dogecoin, Binance Coin, XRP, Monero, and PancakeSwap Cryptocurrencies Today?

The cryptocurrency market is in bullish territory, with Bitcoin (BTC) traded 0.2% higher at $59,911 at press time late Sunday, having earlier on Saturday crossed the psychologically important $60,000 mark. Yet, there are several cryptocurrencies outperforming the apex virtual asset and garnering attention.

Voyager Token (VGX): Voyager is trading 18.7% higher at $4.89 at press time. VGX backs the United States-based crypto broker Voyager Digital Ltd. (OTC:VYGVF).

The cryptocurrency is seeing high interest with Voyager announcing earlier this week that its total assets under management (AUM) exceeded $2.4 billion, with the total number of verified users on its platform crossing the one million mark.

Dogecoin (DOGE): Dogecoin is up 17.2% at $0.075 at press time. The cryptocurrency is likely buoyed by another tweet from Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, touting the meme asset.

See Also: Exclusive: Dogecoin Creator Says What Sets Meme Crypto Apart From ‘Thousands Of Failed Coins’ Is Being A Meme

Binance Coin (BNB): Binance Coin is up 11.1% over 24 hours and nearly 50% up over a seven-day period to $522.58.

The cryptocurrency which backs the Binance blockchain ecosystem has seen a massive spike this year, up over 1282.5% year-to-date.

A major factor in the run-up for BNB has been its being pitched as an alternative to the Ethereum (ETH) network, which has been battling rising transaction costs and delayed confirms.

The cryptocurrency, which now has a market capitalization of over $81 billion, is also buoyed by the rise in popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and speculations that Binance could follow Coinbase’s path — raising funds through a stock offering.

See Also: How to Buy Coinbase IPO (COIN) Stock

XRP (XRP): XRP is down 3.3% over 24 hours to press time at $1.34 but has surged 106.5% over seven days to $1.34.

The cryptocurrency backing the Ripple payments network has been surging in recent weeks, having scored multiple victories in a lawsuit from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

CoinDesk also earlier noted that XRP has a dedicated worldwide base of supporters, who do not necessarily see the SEC lawsuit as a threat.

Monero (XMR): Monero is up 13% over 24 hours to $331.82. The privacy-oriented cryptocurrency has surged about 146.6% year-to-date.

Among recent news, Haveno, a Monero-based decentralized exchange (DEX) launched publicly this week. The team behind the project said the DEX was launched in response to calls from the community for a “native, decentralized and private way to exchange Monero for fiat currencies and other cryptos.”

Cryptojacking, which is the illegal mining of cryptocurrencies on other people’s devices, using Monero has also dropped among the latest market boom since September 2020, as per the “Cloud Threat Report” from Palo Alto Networks.

PancakeSwap (CAKE): PancakeSwap is up nearly 16% over 24 hours and 55.6% over seven days to $26.18.

The cryptocurrency backs the namesake DEX based on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

PancakeSwap is benefitting from the rise in DeFi popularity, alongside investors seeing alternatives to the Ethereum network.

The project has also been putting a string of bullish news, including reporting 900,000 transactions in a single day earlier this week, which it said compared with Ethereum’s 1.3 million transactions.

© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

What is a Dogecoin Worth?

What is a Dogecoin Worth?

One Doge = One Doge. At least that’s what many in the Dogecoin community say and which seeks to make humorous Dogecoin’s (DOGE-USD) mix of steady inflation and high price volatility.

In a cryptocurrency-world dominated still largely by Bitcoin (BTC-USD), Dogecoin stands out remarkably among the ‘non-Bitcoins’, also known as altcoins, for several reasons:

1. It has some high-profile persons who remark on and follow it, in particular the self-anointed “former CEO of Dogecoin” Elon Musk who appears to use it as a way to mock Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.

2. It is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies out there, having been released in December 2013.

3. Its price is particularly unusual as one Dogecoin is, and generally has been, worth so little as to allow even a retail user to accumulate a large seeming-fortune (at least in Dogecoin terms). A Dogecoin unit has hovered recently near its all-time highs of between 5 and 6 cents but for much of its history has been worth just a fraction of a cent, for years even staying consistently as low as $0.001 to $0.002 per unit. This has also meant it has seen extraordinary price volatility even as its nominal price still seems “low” - if one entered Dogecoin at $0.006 and sold around $0.06 that is an over 100x return rate.

4. It neither has a fixed max supply nor an inflation rate controlled by either the market nor a central issuing node/organization. Rather, Dogecoin began with an initial max supply of 100 billion Dogecoins that was reached in 2015 whereupon it began a fixed inflation rate of 5.25 billion Dogecoins per year, creating a proportionally decreasing inflation rate as time goes on. Currently there are around 128 billion Dogecoins, meaning an annualized inflation rate of a bit above 4%.

5. Much of the intention behind its creation was lighthearted and still is. When Dogecoin originated it essentially took the famous “Doge” Internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog and immortalized it in the form of the then-budding cryptocurrency world, creating a plethora of jokes and humor that projected a brighter tone as compared with most cryptocurrencies that stay rooted in a generally serious public image.

Even though Dogecoin originated, and still is, a joke, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have real monetary and technical uses. Dogecoin transfers are quite fast, cheap, and exact (due to the minute value of a Dogecoin). Many large crypto-exchanges support it, such as Kraken and Binance, and it even is available, even if not in wallet and transferable form, on the popular Robinhood stock trading app. Coinbase, while not offering it for sale, still even hosts wallet capabilities for it.

Dogecoin in recent weeks has seen an unusual price surge at a rate that even surpasses that of Bitcoin. I believe this is due to a combination of another surging “cryptocurrency interest” season similar to late 2017/early 2018, and likely to end eventually in a somewhat similar manner, and some statements by Tesla CEO Elon Musk that have driven interest to Dogecoin even though he has stated recently he owns none.

While I’m not certain the current price for Dogecoin is sustainable and also believe that price volatility will still be very much part of this niche cryptocurrency, I particularly like Dogecoin because its financial and technical attributes make it an interesting crypto-currency for actual use in the future. While it may not become the cryptocurrency of an Elon-Musk-run Mars as some advocates say, it nonetheless allows exact, quick, and cheap payments in a way that Bitcoin currently does not. It is ‘fun’ and easy to popularize and access, meaning retail adoption may prove more likely than some of the very technical cryptocurrencies.

Furthermore, its fixed inflation rate means that new Dogecoins will always, at least under the current system, be created and mining still ongoing - this is what allows a cryptocurrency to grow and expand with its user base and resolves, for the most part, a scalability problem that Bitcoin still has not resolved. Dogecoin also is able to control its risk of falling into the altcoin-abyss of forgotten cryptos through its partial piggybacking off of mining the popular Litecoin.

Lastly, even though its volatile, the fact that it still is pegged to itself means it can stand out as a ‘currency’ more than stablecoins that utilize cryptocurrencies' technical attributes without the fiat-to-crypto price exchange.

In short, I like Dogecoin as a real cryptocurrency for potential common and widespread use someday. I can imagine someday in the future paying for a cup of coffee in Dogecoin but doubt I would ever do so with Bitcoin (unless I wanted to pay a $5 transaction fee on a $3 coffee and wait 10 to 20 minutes for it to process). Until Dogecoin sees widespread adoption it likely will continue to see extensive price volatility, but nonetheless I think it’s a worthwhile cryptocurrency to keep an eye on.

Disclosure: I am long DOGE-USD.