Popular cryptocurrency Dogecoin has become an internet sensation, causing its price to soar from 50 to 90 cents overnight and rewarding early investors with millions in profits.

The cryptocurrency, which was based on a meme and created as a joke about digital money, has exploded in value after Elon Musk rallied internet users to purchase the virtual coin in March.

According to Yahoo Finance anchor Zack Guzman, those who invested $1000 into Dogecoin on January 1, 2021, would now have returns of more than $100,000.

Cryptocurrency investor David Aindow says top crypto coins, such as Bitcoin, are ones aimed at solving real world problems and that Doge is trying to prove that you don’t necessarily need a coin to solve a problem.

“You can just create a system that is formed purely based on community hype and the community essentially decides what happens with the coins,” Mr Aindow says.

But Curtin University finance expert Professor Shams Pathan said the Dogecoin cryptocurrenty is not being used for its intended purpose.

“This was created for the medium of exchange, not for investment,” Dr Pathan said.

“For some weird reason (it’s rise) is beyond our understanding as economical and financial analysts, people are using it as an investment vehicle.”

While Dr Pathan has his doubts about the longevity of Dogecoin, not everyone agrees.

“Purely because of the power of internet culture and meme culture, right now, there is no reason not to put money into it and see what happens,” Mr Aindow says.

He believes that eventually, a competitor will rise above Dogecoin, causing its price to drop.

“Obviously the point of it in 10 years time is for it to be spent locally, but at the moment it is so fresh,” Mr Aindow said.

“I feel like that will change in ten years time.”

Even with Dogecoin’s recent growth, the leading cryptocurrency right now is Bitcoin. This was also invented as a means of exchange, however, once this became an investment tool governments began to issue restrictions.

“Bitcoin was also created… to remove the barriers from other countries, but we can see that people are using it for investment and now the regulators are worried about how to control that,” Dr Pathan said.