A Shiba Inu meme token supporting a $30 billion market cap, a single tweet capable of generating a 300% surge—Dogecoin has reshaped the imagination of the crypto market with its magical storyline. But the bill for this frenzy ultimately falls on retail investors' hard-earned money. As an observer who experienced the 2021 DOGE mania and the 2025 plunge, I want to analyze what this bubble has taught us.

**Celebrity Effect is a Double-Edged Sword: When Heroes Turn into Butchers**

Elon Musk's association with Dogecoin has become the most famous "sales pitch" story in the crypto world. One tweet sends the price soaring; when he turns away, the market instantly freezes. Ironically, this "super promoter" once bluntly said on Saturday Night Live: "This is a scam." Is it contradictory? Not at all. The influence of celebrities is inherently unstable. When the spotlight dims, what happens to those who follow the trend? Data speaks: among retail investors who bought the top in 2021, 90% are still trapped at around $0.6. They didn't buy into the technology—they bought into a person's promise—and promises are the most fragile.

**Supply Inflation is an Invisible Harvesting Machine**

Dogecoin issues 5 billion new coins annually, which isn't a technological innovation but an economic sin. The continuous expansion of supply effectively dilutes the value of each holder's coins. In contrast, Bitcoin's 21 million cap and Ethereum's move toward a deflationary mechanism have long proven the importance of scarcity through practice. But how many truly understood this basic fact during the 2021 frenzy? Price increases mask everything, including this ticking time bomb.

**Centralized Platforms: You Never Know What's Happening**

Remember the platform scandal in 2020? Some developers manipulated coin prices through backdoors, causing 77.76 million yuan to evaporate right under users' noses. Ironically, the original purpose of cryptocurrencies was decentralization and resisting financial monopolies. But in reality, most DOGE transactions still occur on centralized exchanges, where each trade may hide risks. Are the prices you see truly the actual transaction prices? No one can guarantee that.

This is the lesson Dogecoin teaches us: popularity fades, prices collapse, but the most costly lesson is for those who entered driven by emotion.