What’s left for DOGE in 2023 if Elon Musk steps down from Twitter?

The news that Elon Musk could step down as Twitter CEO hasn't been good for Dogecoin.

Dogecoin is -17% down in the past week, and -32% down on the local high of $0.11 which DOGE hit in early December. That high came of course on the back of news that Elon Musk was about to enter Twitter.

So where does Dogecoin go from here?

Will Elon Musk end the Dogecoin dream?

On December 19th, Elon Musk published a Twitter poll asking if he should step down as its head. "I will abide by the results of this poll", he wrote. A majority 57.5% of votes asked Musk to leave the building.

But Elon Musk stepping down as Twitter CEO doesn't mean he's giving up on it. 

Musk is still the owner of Twitter. He will still have influence over the company even if he isn't involved in the day-to-day operations. So there's a chance the Dogecoin could still find its way onto Twitter. 

What will Dogecoin do in 2023 without Twitter?

Not even Musk has promised to integrate Dogecoin with Twitter somehow. The 150% price pump that accompanied his entrance was pure speculation.

You can buy Tesla merchandise online with Dogecoin, and so there's a chance Twitter will join.

But with Binance already putting $500 million into the deal to take Twitter private there's also a big chance that BNB, BUSD or the BNB Chain will play the major role should crypto make an entrance. 

So what would Dogecoin do in 2023 without Twitter?

Here are three possibilities.

#1 Dogecoin suffers from lack of popularity and inflation 

We have to start with the risks. Dogecoin is a meme token, and memes need popularity to survive.

The Dogecoin community is currently one of the biggest on Reddit with 2.4 million followers, only bettered by r/Bitcoin with 4.8 million. But if all that popularity has no bullish news stories to keep it going, Dogecoin could fall in the popularity rankings. 

And that's where inflation could start affecting it. 

Some 5 billion DOGE gets added to the supply each year as a miner's reward. It's part of Dogecoin's validation. Over time Dogecoin inflation will have a negative effect on the price. 

Compare this with newer altcoins on the market like EverGrow, which uses 2% of every transaction to burn tokens. EverGrow also has applications like an NFT marketplace sending 100% of revenue towards burning tokens. Altogether EverGrow is on track to burn about 15% of its circulating supply each year, and continually raise in price.

Read more about EverGrow here: https://evergrowegc.com/

#2 Dogecoin gets more acceptance from merchants 

Now back to the positives.

Dogecoin became an accepted form of payment at a surprising number of merchants in 2022. Think Gucci, Tag Heuer, Dallas Mavericks, airBaltic and more. The vast majority of these were thanks to Dogecoin's acceptance on BitPay, the leading crypto payments provider.

If more and more merchants follow suit – or accepting crypto payments becomes easier – this could have a positive effect on Dogecoin.

Dogecoin started out as a fun way to get into crypto or tip other people online, and it could keep this status intact if it can find payment uses far outside of Twitter.

#3 The Dogechain takes off 

DogeChain launched this 2022, styling itself as a sort of layer-2 solution for Dogecoin.

But in fact it's very different to Dogecoin. DogeChain is built on Polygon Edge. To make use of your Dogecoin holdings you need to exchange DOGE from wrapped DOGE (wDOGE) and then interact with dapps, NFT marketplaces and other DeFi projects on the DogeChain.

For now, there aren't many projects involved in DogeChain. 

But if it takes off due to development or popularity, the success could take Dogecoin along with it.