A 33-year-old man from Los Angeles recently claimed to have become a millionaire by investing in the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Glauber Contessoto had said on April 15 at 6 pm PDT, he became a Dogecoin millionaire. He said that he had invested over $180,000 into Dogecoin when its price was about 0.045 cents, on February 5.

“A reason why I put my savings into Dogecoin is Elon musk”, Contessotto told CNBC. He thought that it could help him build wealth to pass on to his future family, the CNBC report mentioned.

Contessoto invested in Dogecoin for a few reasons. For one, he loves the Reddit community surrounding the digital coin. Dogecoin was created as a joke in 2013 and it has now grown substantially. He also appreciated that it was inspired by the Shiba Inu "Doge" meme and the billionaire Elon Musk was a key inspiration behind his decision.

He claimed in his YouTube video that the Tesla boss owned about a third of the Dogecoins in circulation.

Contessoto added that he grew up poor and that his gain from the meme currency was a huge deal for him. He works at a music company in Los Angeles and belongs to a middle-class family. So to invest in this he not only used all his savings but he also sold all the stock he owned, including shares of Tesla and Uber, he said.

In this investment journey, his friends even criticised him. Contessoto said it was not their fault, even the cryptocurrency experts were also skeptical about the Dogecoin and very risky when it comes to investing in it.

Also, he said that he stuck to his plans despite warnings from friends and that he'd decided to take out 10 percent of his holdings once he hit $10 million.

Dogecoin value had surged by 8,000 percent last week, trading near $0.42. It was trading at $0.28 on Monday, with a market cap of about $36 billion.

First Published:Apr 27, 2021 1:35 PM IST