Update 1/28/2021: DogeCoin is once again surging on the back of the WallStreetBets GameStop insanity. As a result, the price has more than doubled in the last 24 hours, and is currently valued around $0.02 per Doge — around four times the price it reached at the peak of the TikTok challenge in July of 2020.

If there’s one thing people over the age of 60 hate more than everything they don’t understand, it’s when one of those things starts making other people money.

Which is why the latest financial news is perfectly designed to make Baby Boomers’ grey matter turn to jelly and slide gently out their noses: A trending TikTok challenge has led to a massive spike in the sale of satirical cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

To explain why this story is like salt being poured directly on Boomers’ brain-slugs, let’s break down its components — from the perspective of someone who was born in the 80s and is therefore almost equally alienated from the whole mess.. But be warned, if you read the following explanations out loud, anyone in the room who remembers being sad when Elvis died may sneeze goopy brain juice all over you.

What’s TikTok?

TikTok is the social media platform par excellence among Gen-Z. It specializes in viral dance crazes, pretty food, and comedic bits maxing out at 60 seconds long. The fastest growing social media app in recent years, TikTok has been complicit in redefining the word “challenge” to mean “thing that people are doing.”

YouTube CooL TikTok

It has also birthed a new generation of teenage influencers who earn millions of dollars off of making colorful nonsense for young fans whose data is being aggressively harvested. It’s like a heightened version of YouTube with the added bonus that the Chinese government may be using it to spy on you.

What’s Dogecoin?

Cryptocurrency, meanwhile, is a concept for replacing money with complicated math and wild speculation. Unlike the stock market — which is dominated by people who grew up breathing leaded gas fumes and DDT — markets for buying and selling cryptocurrency like Bitcoin belong largely to Millenials and Zoomers.

Theoretically (but not actually) anonymous, and responsible for consuming more electricity than most medium-sized countries, cryptocurrencies have been wildly volatile but may soon stabilize and replace traditional banks and currencies. For now though, they remain largely the purview of Internet drug dealers and ransomware scammers. Also, if you forget your password, all your money disappears.

Dogecoin meets NASCAR at Talladega: 90 Seconds on The Vergewww.youtube.com

If all that wasn’t scary enough for anyone who thinks that “Beatles vs. Stones” is still a worthwhile debate, Dogecoin is the inside-joke version of cryptocurrency. Based on an outdated meme of a Shiba Inu dog — or “doge” as the kids haven’t said since 2014 — that speaks in broken English, Dogecoin has nonetheless become shockingly valuable.

Currently trading at less than half a cent per Doge, the fact that there are more than 120 billion currently in circulation puts the total, actual value of this Internet joke-money in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite its intended absurdity, the weirdly devoted community around Dogecoin has managed to put together substantial charitable donations in Doge, and they’ve even sponsored their own Doge-themed vehicle in NASCAR.

Much confuse. So brain melt.

The “Dogecoin Challenge”

Now, putting these pieces together, the so-called Dogecoin challenge (which simply involved buying Dogecoin…) went viral on TikTok this week, leading to a massive spike in the movement of Dogecoin. The purported goal of bringing the price of Dogecoin up to $1 would be more than a 200 fold increase in its value.

That seems an unlikely — and probably not that serious — goal, but the trend has already seen the value of Dogecoin double in the last few days. Does this mean that baby boomers who are feeling skittish about the future of the economy in these uncertain times should dump their retirement savings into Dogecoin and see their investments skyrocket?

No. Definitely not. It’s still a joke, and even if it doubles its value again, the total value of Dogecoin will be substantially lower than it was in 2018. Cryptocurrency is an extremely volatile and little-understood sector of the market that may serve a purpose for young investors who feel free to take big risks, but it still doesn’t have much of a role in a cautious portfolio.

On the other hand, if your brain has fully liquified and drained out of your skull already, you might be primed to take the Dogecoin challenge, and also to enjoy most of the content on TikTok.

Signed,

Your Fellow Old Person