Dogecoin (DOGE) early developer BuildrJ (빌더제이) raised the possibility that Dogecoin could enter the top five cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation. He put the timing at the end of 2026.

Blockchain media outlet The Crypto Basic reported on Tuesday that he attributed Dogecoin's long period of rangebound trading not to weak demand but to structural limits in its ecosystem.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, titled "When $1?" he said Dogecoin lacks a self-sustaining onchain economic system that can keep capital in place and preserve value. Under the current structure, even if funds and attention flow into Dogecoin, they ultimately exit the ecosystem through centralised exchanges and stablecoins, making long-term value accumulation difficult.

He then defined Dogecoin as a "value transfer network" and said it has not yet reached the stage of a self-sustaining digital economy.

He cited Dogecoin's launch structure. BuildrJ said Dogecoin launched in 2013 without venture capital funding, pre-mined supply or insider token distributions. He argued that because it grew with community support rather than a corporate funding model, it is among the industry's most decentralised digital assets.

He said that structure alone makes sustained price breakouts difficult. BuildrJ said Dogecoin lacks smart contract functionality and a native onchain economy, limiting its ability to support DeFi, applications and other blockchain-based services. He said it therefore lacks mechanisms to lock liquidity into the ecosystem and generate economic activity.

He cited Ethereum and Solana as comparisons. Ethereum's total value locked stands at $36.62 billion and Solana's at $4.77 billion, while Dogecoin's total value locked is effectively negligible. Even so, Dogecoin maintains a market capitalisation of more than $14 billion.

BuildrJ said Dogecoin is already valued at billions of dollars based on brand recognition, cultural influence and community loyalty, and that adding practical utility could significantly strengthen its value proposition.

He said the conditions were not complex. He said it would be sufficient to have a functional native economy that lets users transact, deploy applications and participate in DeFi-type activity. He argued that stronger onchain activity would increase trading volume, draw in liquidity and expand developer participation, ultimately supporting a higher valuation.

On that basis, BuildrJ said a $40 billion Dogecoin market cap could be seen not as an unrealistic target but as a "realistic revaluation". Depending on market conditions, that scale could be enough to enter the top five. Solana, currently the fifth-largest non-stablecoin asset, has a market cap of about $37.08 billion.

For Dogecoin to reach a $40 billion market cap, it would need to grow about 181 percent from $14.25 billion. In price terms, that implies a rise to $0.2349 from about $0.08369. He said this assumes that Solana and the broader cryptocurrency market remain relatively stable while only Dogecoin grows sharply.

Key points to watch are whether Dogecoin can actually raise smart contract functionality and onchain usage, and whether it can build a structure that keeps incoming funds within the ecosystem.

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