Dogecoin surges 18% as the meme coin's $31 billion valuation eclipses Deutsche Bank

• Dogecoin surged 14% on Thursday, hitting its highest level since November 2021.
• The meme-token has surged in a broader cryptocurrency rally. 
• Dogecoin now has a market valuation of $31 billion, which makes it bigger than Deutsche bank.

The ongoing revival in cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in the price of dogecoin, the meme-token that sports a Shiba Inu dog as its mascot.

Dogecoin surged 18% on Thursday to $0.22, hitting its highest level since November 2021. The crypto token is up 40% over the past week, is up 145% so far this year, and is up 191% over the past year. 

Aside from Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggesting that customers might one day be able to buy a car with dogecoin, there has been no material news related to dogecoin recently.

Dogecoin's rally coincides with a broader surge in cryptocurrencies amid strong demand for the recently launched spot bitcoin ETFs and ahead of the bitcoin halving event next month.

The surge in the meme coin has catapulted its market value to just over $31 billion as of Thursday afternoon, which makes it slightly bigger than Deutsche Bank, the eighth-largest bank in the world that manages more than $1.3 trillion in assets. 

For a cryptocurrency that was created as a joke to make fun of other cryptocurrencies, it's an impressive valuation.

But it pales in comparison to what traders were valuing dogecoin at the height of the crypto boom in 2021, when it hit a peak valuation of $75.2 billion.

Since then, the price of dogecoin has declined by 62%.

Despite that sharp decline, dogecoin remains the eighth-largest cryptocurrency as measured by market value, and its ongoing rise is a signal of the current risk-on mood among traders.