What occurs when a joke will get taken significantly? In 2013, Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a strategy to poke enjoyable on the crypto trade; now it is one of many world’s greatest cryptocurrencies. How did it get so far?
What’s Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that takes its identify from the “doge” web meme. It began as a strategy to mock the crypto trade, however shortly constructed up a vigorous group of lovers.
It has come a great distance since 2013; through the 2021 crypto bull run, it briefly hit a market cap of $88 billion. Dogecoin celebrated its tenth anniversary on December sixth, 2023.
Who created it?
Jackson Palmer, an Adobe worker, couldn’t consider the massive variety of altcoins that have been popping up in 2013. As a joke, he despatched out a tweet saying he was investing in Dogecoin—a pretend coin based mostly on a preferred meme that includes a Shiba Inu canine.
Regardless that he tweeted in jest, a number of individuals thought he was on to one thing. They mentioned the trade actually wanted a lighthearted token that might counter the extra controversial cash on supply. So Palmer teamed up with Billy Markus, a programmer, to make Dogecoin a actuality.
“It was at all times like a passion challenge, like a aspect challenge factor,” Palmer informed Decrypt in 2018. However a group shortly shaped across the cryptocurrency, and took it a lot additional than Palmer had anticipated.
A quick historical past of Dogecoin
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- Dec 2013 – Dogecoin was based by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus.
- March 2014 – The Dogecoin group raises $55,000 in DOGE to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Clever.
- June 2014 – The Dogecoin Basis is established to preside over the forex’s code.
- April 2015 – Co-founder Jackson Palmer leaves Dogecoin.
- January 2018 – Dogecoin briefly surpasses a $2 billion market cap.
- July 2020 – A viral TikTok problem sends Dogecoin volumes hovering, pushing the worth up by 96%. The flurry of value motion swiftly passes.
- January 2021 – Dogecoin surges to a market cap of over $9 billion in a value surge orchestrated by the SatoshiStreetBets subreddit.
- Could 2021 – Dogecoin’s value hits an all-time excessive of $0.73 within the run-up to Elon Musk’s look on Saturday Night time Reside.
- Could 2021 – Dogecoin builders reveal that Elon Musk has been advising them since 2019.
- June 2021 – Crypto alternate Coinbase lists Dogecoin.
- August 2021 – The Dogecoin Basis relaunches after six years, with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin becoming a member of its board of advisers.
- November 2022: Elon Musk proclaims that he’ll improve Dogecoin with Vitalik Buterin, driving the worth up; Buterin has but to substantiate this.
- Could 2023: The DRC-20 normal is launched, enabling the creation of “Doginals,” much like Bitcoin Ordinals, a novel digital asset akin to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
- November 2024: Dogecoin surges once more on the again of hype across the U.S. Division of Authorities Effectivity (D.O.G.E.), which President-elect Donald Trump mentioned Musk will co-run.
Do you know?
Billy Markus, Dogecoin’s co-founder, goes by the nickname ‘Shibetoshi Nakamoto’. It’s a play on the doge meme, together with Bitcoin’s mysterious founder Satoshi Nakamoto. In June 2020, he purchased again into Dogecoin after “8 years of vowing by no means to purchase crypto once more.”
What’s so particular about it?
- 💨 Velocity and value – Dogecoin affords quick transactions and low transaction charges—each important for large adoption.
- 💰 Limitless provide – Initially Dogecoin was capped at 100 billion cash, but it surely was later modified to an infinite provide. That retains the worth comparatively secure.
- 🤝 Group – The guts of Dogecoin is its energetic group. The greater than 300,000 members of the r/dogecoin subreddit are famend for being a pleasant and welcoming bunch.
- 🤗 Philanthropy – That very same group has been identified to rally round good causes. They raised greater than $25,000 in Dogecoin to assist ship the cash-strapped Jamaican bobsled workforce to the 2014 Olympics. Additionally they teamed up with a water charity to boost hundreds to enhance clear water entry in Kenya by way of the Doge4Water initiative.
How does Dogecoin work?
The upside of Dogecoin’s unending provide of tokens is that the worth stays comparatively secure. The draw back is that the worth often stays very low. Most individuals get into the crypto world as an funding. They hope that in the event that they cling onto sure tokens lengthy sufficient, they’ll promote for a revenue.
Not so with Dogecoin. For the reason that token provide is excessive and the worth is low, it’s not engaging to traders trying to maintain onto their forex. The result’s a extremely liquid, free-flowing peer-to-peer digital forex.
What are you able to do with Dogecoin?
A key use of Dogecoin is as a web based tipping system. When you like what somebody posted within the Dogecoin Reddit group, throw them some Dogecoin. It’s a part of what provides the group its pleasant popularity.
You may also commerce it for different cryptocurrencies on a number of exchanges, which has made the forex an unlikely medium by which individuals hop from one alternate to a different.
From meme coin to Elon Musk’s favourite crypto
For one thing that started off as a joke, Dogecoin has established a reputable popularity. The group’s philanthropic endeavors shortly caught the eye of the media; Dogecoin followers sponsored NASCAR driver Josh Clever in 2014, funded the Jamaican bobsled workforce on the 2014 Winter Olympics, and later raised hundreds for a Kenyan water charity.
Co-founder Jackson Palmer is not a fan of how significantly individuals take Dogecoin; he left in 2015, after scammers fleeced the fun-loving members of the Dogecoin group. On the time, he mentioned too many individuals have been leaping in with a “get wealthy fast” mentality, lacking the token’s function.
When Dogecoin briefly hit a $2 billion market cap in January 2018, Palmer remained important. He acknowledged, “I feel it says so much concerning the state of the cryptocurrency area on the whole {that a} forex with a canine on it which hasn’t launched a software program replace in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap.”
Dogecoin picked up steam as soon as once more in 2020; partly because of the emergence of a brand new social media platform that traffics in memes. In July 2020, a viral TikTok problem inspired customers of the app to spend money on the cryptocurrency, briefly inflicting the worth to soar—to the purpose the place the official Dogecoin account needed to weigh in, cautioning individuals to “Keep secure. Be good.”
On the identical time, Dogecoin discovered a star fan in billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who started tweeting concerning the cryptocurrency—although he later clarified that he was speaking in jest.
Musk could have been joking on that event, however he has put Dogecoin to sensible use at occasions; in Could 2021, he introduced that his area exploration agency SpaceX would launch a “Doge-1” satellite tv for pc to the Moon, “paid for in Doge.”
The Tesla CEO’s tweets additionally seem to have moved the marketplace for Dogecoin. After Musk tweeted “One phrase: Doge” in December 2020, the worth of Dogecoin shot up by 17%, from $0.0039 to $0.0046. In February 2021, he criticized Dogecoin’s wealth distribution; the worth subsequently plunged by 20%. And following Musk’s buy of Twitter in October 2022, the social media website briefly modified its brand to the Doge meme in April 2023; Dogecoin surged by over 20%.
Issues got here to a head in June 2023, when Musk, Tesla and SpaceX have been hit with a $258 billion lawsuit alleging that they engaged in a racketeering scheme to control the worth of the cryptocurrency. Musk has sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, together with his attorneys calling it a “fanciful work of fiction” based mostly on his “innocuous and sometimes foolish tweets” concerning the cryptocurrency.
The way forward for Dogecoin
Maybe inevitably, Dogecoin’s success has impressed imitators. Different meme cash have sprung up, together with Pepe (PEPE), Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), and Bonk (BONK), and DOGE has finally led to tens of millions of religious successors over time.
In August 2021, the Dogecoin Basis was re-established, with advisory board members together with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus, Dogecoin core developer Max Keller and Neuralink CEO Jared Birchall.
Could 2023 noticed the launch of the DRC-20 token normal, permitting for the creation of “Doginals,” a novel digital asset akin to non-fungible tokens and based mostly on Bitcoin Ordinals. The protocol even permits builders to place video games on the Dogecoin blockchain, together with the old-school shareware model of Doom and a completely unique arcade-style beat-’em-up referred to as Tremendous Doginals.
The launch of the brand new normal noticed Dogecoin transactions soar to a brand new all-time excessive, although some core builders have been skeptical of the prospects of the function, arguing that it “has not had sufficient thought given to it.”
Whereas Dogecoin’s devs are knuckling all the way down to the long-term aim of turning the meme coin right into a fully-functioning on a regular basis forex, many latter-day meme cash are open about the truth that they’re taking a extra trial-and-error method; in SHIB’s case, it payments itself as “an experiment in decentralized spontaneous group constructing.”
Others do not see the humorous aspect; in June 2020, Thailand’s Securities and Change Fee ordered crypto exchanges to delist meme cash (alongside NFTs and social tokens), defining them as tokens which have “no clear goal or substance or underlying [value],” and whose value depends on social media tendencies.
Dogecoin has seen substantial ups and downs through the years, however because the DOGE group says, ultimately one factor is immutable: 1 DOGE = 1 DOGE.
Most lately, as of this newest replace in November 2024, Dogecoin has jumped to a three-year excessive value on the again of broader crypto market hype after the reelection of Donald Trump, a crypto advocate who has promised to assist the trade.
Extra particularly, nonetheless, DOGE has pumped due the upcoming launch of a brand new authorities company referred to as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or sure, D.O.G.E. Trump introduced that Musk will co-lead the trouble with Bitcoin-savvy entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, with a watch in direction of slashing authorities spending.
Trump even launched t-shirts with himself, Musk, and a Doge picture on them. Amid the post-election hype, Dogecoin has pumped as excessive as about $0.43, as of this writing, skyrocketing to a value level not seen since 2021.
All through its lifespan, the Dogecoin group has remained energetic and dependable. If proponents’ aim of turning Dogecoin right into a bona fide (or ‘bona fido’, maybe?) forex for transacting in succeeds, it may very effectively stick round lengthy into the long run. Wow.
