Since Tesla chief Elon Musk took over the reins of social networking giant Twitter, nearly $140 million worth of Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) have been liquidated, even as the popular memecoin continued its stellar performance on Monday, trading up over 10%.
Having been widely mentioned by the "Dogefather" — as Musk is known in crypto circles — Doge has gained over 110% over the past week and has reached a market capitalization of a mouth-watering $17.36 billion, with the memecoin trumping Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA) as the eighth largest cryptocurrency.
Out of the $140 million in total liquidations, $80 million were liquidated from traders holding short positions, or bets taken against the rise in the price of the cryptocurrency, according to data from Coinglass.
According to Whale Alert, over $18 million worth of Dogecoin was transferred from several whale wallets to various cryptocurrency exchanges over the last day.
The biggest transaction recorded was the move of 100 million Dogecoin to a Binance wallet.
Liquidations for DOGE third-highest in 24 hours After the liquidations of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) at $37.89 million and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) at $23.59 million, liquidations for Dogecoin were the highest among all other cryptocurrencies at $19.43 million.
According to analysts, the unusually high liquidations for DOGE short sellers is one of the major factors that led to the memecoin’s price rise from 7 cents to 13 cents on Sunday.
DOGE is currently trading at $0.129, up 7.8% over the past 24 hours.
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Meanwhile, there is an open interest of $725.2 million on Dogecoin futures, a change of 18.34%, according to data from Coinalyze.
Musk's romance with DOGE Musk has in the past backed DOGE in several instances, sharing its memes and promoting the memecoin on Twitter.
Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, all owned by Musk, accept Dogecoin as payment for goods.
He even named SpaceX’s 2022 lunar mission DOGE-1.
DOGE has in the past faced wild fluctuations due to Musk’s tweets and announcements.
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