The Senate’s draft crypto bill gave Dogecoin a temporary boost.
Dogecoin (DOGE 1.45%) gained 8% on Jan. 13, taking it to almost $0.15. You might be surprised to learn the uptick wasn’t driven by a celebrity posting a picture of a cute dog on social media. Instead, the surge seems to be connected to a provision in the latest draft of the Senate’s crypto bill, released on Monday night.
The 278-page document builds on the Clarity Act passed by the House last year. It aims to divide digital assets into clear categories and set out which entities regulate each one. The main division is between “ancillary assets” and “digital commodities.”
Ancillary assets don’t count as securities, but they would come under the remit of the SEC. They have to follow much stricter reporting and trading rules than digital commodities. For the most part, the SEC would decide which projects are ancillary assets.
If the bill became law, it would give Dogecoin instant non-ancillary-asset status. Without getting too far into the weeds, there’s a clause that says that a crypto is not an ancillary asset if it is already the main asset in an existing exchange-traded product (ETP). That would apply to Dogecoin as there are three spot Dogecoin ETFs, the first of which was approved in September 2025.
Dogecoin’s price spiked after several news articles pointed out that the bill put Dogecoin — along with XRP, Solana, and others — in the same category as Bitcoin.
Dogecoin enthusiasts will likely be pleased to see the happy-go-lucky dog’s price frolicking in the green. Unfortunately, the draft bill text doesn’t do much to change the project’s broader prospects. For starters, it may never become law. If it does, it will undergo many changes before then. Indeed, CoinDesk says there are already over 75 amendments on the table.
I don’t doubt the benefits of being in a crypto ETF. It makes it easier for institutional and retail investors to add Dogecoin to their portfolios. They can buy shares in the ETF rather than DOGE tokens directly and not worry about custody. However, it’s hard to see how this automatic non-ancillary-asset status would be a major competitive advantage over time. All it would do is cut the red tape in the near term.
Legislative back-and-forth aside, the issue for Dogecoin is that it still lacks utility and appears to be stagnating. Its price has fallen by over 55% in the past year and is down almost 80% from its 2021 all-time high. A look at the Dogecoin website shows sluggish activity, with only 10 blog posts in four years.
The cryptocurrency industry could be on the cusp of significant change through things like stablecoin adoption and tokenization, but they are unlikely to touch on Dogecoin. In fact, increased stablecoin usage could dent Dogecoin’s main use case as a form of money.
Dogecoin’s fame and large community continue to be its biggest assets. The trouble is, it hasn’t found a way to capitalize on them. Having status under any new crypto regulation wouldn’t change its fundamental challenges.
