Has the popularity of digital currency Dogecoin started to wane? Transactions of the popular cryptocurrency have dropped to its lowest since December 2017. The number of daily transactions of the retail-favourite canine-themed cryptocurrency fell to 18,000, as per cryptocurrency market data provider CryptoCompare. This is in sharp contrast to figures in April, when daily transactions had peaked to more than 140,000.

The daily transaction rate is used as a fundamental on-chain metric to showShina the blockchain's usage.

The dip in on-chain activity reflected in Dogecoin’s prices, which dropped nearly 71 percent from its all-time high of $0.73 on May 8. The Dogecoin price stood at $0.22 on the CryptoCompare platform at the time of writing this story.

At the beginning of 2021, Dogecoin saw a phenomenal price rise thanks to the support it received from billionaire Elon Musk, one of its chief crusaders. The Tesla and SpaceX chief has contributed to several price rallies of the coin on various occasions through references and memes on Twitter.

At its all-time high price of $0.73 on May 8, the meme token held the fourth position in terms of market cap. However, Dogecoin markets have not performed well since then.

Competitors and imitators

One of the reasons behind the fall could be the interest of retail investors in knock-offs. Dogecoin has seen a fair share of imitators and competitors, the most famous being Shiba Inu, with the Shib token and Doge Killer, with the token names, KillDoge and Leash.

Earlier this year, Doge Killer was trading much higher that Dogecoin at almost $8,000. The latest addition to this list of knock-offs is the coin named Nano Dogecoin, which reported a 5,000 percent spike in value within a day.

Following the growing popularity of other digital currencies based on the same Shiba Inu meme, the Dogecoin Foundation filed for a patent for the brand name. The Dogecoin Foundation is a non-profit organisation formed in 2014 by the cryptocurrency's creators and supporters.

The fall in the transaction levels has sparked a debate on the popularity of the meme coin that was originally created as a joke on the cryptocurrency universe in 2013.

Support for Dogecoin

But the power of Dogecoin remains strong despite transaction levels hitting its lowest level since 2017, media outlet Cointelegraph said.

Meanwhile, multiple firms have made adoption plays for Dogecoin this week. Robinhood Markets has confirmed that it will roll out a new cyprto wallet feature next month that will allow users to make Dogecoin deposits and withdrawals. Following the move, Dogecoin Co-Creator Billy Markus tweeted: “Okay we are allowed to overreact now Robinhood wallets is huge news for Dogecoin -- it opens up so many users to the real utility of cryptocurrency!”

Also read: Dogecoin co-creator takes a dig at ‘wealthy figures’ who control crypto

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron recently ran a Twitter poll asking followers if the movie chain should accept the joke coin for ticket payments by end of 2021. About 68.1 percent of the voters said “Yes, for sure do it.”

SO FASCINATING! Dogecoin Poll was by far my highest ever read tweet. In 24 hours, 4.2 million views, my most ever retweets, most ever replies. 140,000 votes 77% yes 23% no. It’s clear that you think AMC should accept Dogecoin. Now we need to figure out how to do that. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/tkClzgMBMO

— Adam Aron (@CEOAdam) September 22, 2021

After the poll, Aron tweeted: “It’s clear that you think AMC should accept Dogecoin. Now we need to figure out how to do that. Stay tuned!”

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)