What Is Dogecoin? The Original Meme Coin Explained

What occurs when a joke is taken significantly? In 2013, Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a option to poke enjoyable on the crypto business; now it is without doubt one of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies. How did it come to this?

What’s Dogecoin?

Dogecoin is one cryptocurrency that takes its title from the “doge” web meme. It began as a option to mock the crypto business, however shortly constructed a vibrant neighborhood of fans.

It has come a great distance since 2013; in the course of the 2021 crypto bull run, it briefly reached a market cap of $88 billion. Dogecoin celebrated its tenth anniversary on December 6, 2023.

Who made it?

Jackson Palmer, an Adobe worker, could not imagine the sheer quantity altcoins that emerged in 2013. As a joke, he despatched out a tweet saying he was investing in Dogecoin – a faux coin based mostly on a preferred meme that includes a Shiba Inu canine.

Though he tweeted in jest, a number of individuals thought he was on to one thing. They stated the business actually wanted a light-hearted token that would counter the extra controversial cash on supply. So Palmer teamed up with Billy Markus, a programmer, to make Dogecoin a actuality.

“It was all the time like a pastime venture, like a facet venture,” Palmer stated Declutter in 2018. However a neighborhood shortly shaped across the cryptocurrency, going far past what Palmer anticipated.

A quick historical past of Dogecoin

• • December 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 Sensible.
  • June 2014 – The Dogecoin Foundation was created to information the code of the foreign money.
  • April 2015 – Co-founder Jackson Palmer leaves Dogecoin.
  • January 2018 – Dogecoin briefly surpasses a market cap of $2 billion.
  • July 2020 – A viral TikTok problem causes Dogecoin volumes to skyrocket, driving its value up by 96%. The wave of value motion passes shortly.
  • January 2021 – Dogecoin soars to a market cap of over $9 billion in a value surge orchestrated by the SatoshiStreetBets subreddit.
  • Might 2021 – The worth of Dogecoin reaches an all-time excessive of $0.73 forward of Elon Musk’s look on Saturday Night time Dwell.
  • Might 2021 – Dogecoin builders reveal that Elon Musk has been advising them since 2019.
  • June 2021 – Crypto alternate Coin base mentions Dogecoin.
  • August 2021 – The Dogecoin Basis is relaunching after six years, with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin becoming a member of its board of advisors.
  • November 2022: Elon Musk pronounces he’ll improve Dogecoin with Vitalik Buterin, driving up the worth; Buterin has but to verify this.
  • Might 2023: The DRC-20 commonplace is launched, permitting the creation of ‘Doginals’, just like Bitcoin Ordinals, a singular digital asset just like non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
  • November 2024: Dogecoin is rising once more on the hype surrounding the US Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), which President-elect Donald Trump stated Musk will co-lead.

What’s so particular about it?

• 💨 Velocity ​​and prices – Dogecoin provides quick transactions and low transaction charges, each important for widespread adoption.
• 💰Limitless supply – Initially, Dogecoin was restricted to 100 billion cash, however this was later modified to an infinite provide. This retains the worth comparatively steady.
• 🤝 Group – The center of Dogecoin is the lively neighborhood. The greater than 300,000 members of the r/dogecoin subreddit is thought for being a pleasant and welcoming group.
• 🤗 Philanthropy – The identical neighborhood is thought to assist good causes. She raised more than $25,000 in Dogecoin to assist ship the poor Jamaican bobsled group to the 2014 Olympics. Additionally they partnered with a water charity to lift 1000’s of individuals to assist enhance entry to wash water in Kenya Doge4Water initiative.

How does Dogecoin work?

The benefit of Dogecoin’s infinite provide of tokens is that the worth stays comparatively steady. The drawback is that the worth normally stays very low. Most individuals enter the crypto world as an funding. They hope that in the event that they maintain on to sure tokens lengthy sufficient, they will promote for a revenue.

Not so with Dogecoin. As a result of the token provide is excessive and the worth is low, it isn’t enticing for traders who wish to maintain their foreign money. The result’s a extremely liquid, free-flowing peer-to-peer digital foreign money.

What are you able to do with Dogecoin?

A serious use of Dogecoin is as a web-based tipping system. If you happen to like what somebody within the Dogecoin Reddit neighborhood posted, throw them some Dogecoin. It is a part of what provides the neighborhood its pleasant popularity.

You can too alternate it for different cryptocurrencies on varied exchanges, making the foreign money an unlikely medium via which individuals can leap from one alternate to a different.

From meme coin to Elon Musk’s favourite crypto

For one thing that began as a joke, Dogecoin has constructed a reliable popularity. The neighborhood’s philanthropic efforts shortly attracted media consideration; Dogecoin followers sponsored NASCAR driver Josh Wise funded the 2014 Jamaican bobsled team on the 2014 Winter Olympics, and later raised 1000’s 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 duped the fun-loving members of the Dogecoin neighborhood. On the time, he stated too many individuals jumped in with a get-rich-quick mentality, lacking the purpose of the token.

When Dogecoin briefly reached a market cap of $2 billion in January 2018, Palmer remained important. He declared“I feel it says quite a bit in regards to the state of the cryptocurrency area basically {that a} foreign money with a canine on it that hasn’t launched a software program replace in over two years has a market cap of over $1 billion.”

Dogecoin gained momentum once more in 2020; thanks partly to the rise of a brand new social media platform that traffics in memes. In July 2020, a viral TikTok problem inspired app customers to spend money on the cryptocurrency, briefly inflicting its value to skyrocket – to the purpose the place the official Dogecoin account needed to weigh in. warn people to “Keep secure. Be good.”

On the identical time, Dogecoin discovered a well-known fan in billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who began tweet in regards to the cryptocurrency – though he later clarified that he was talk jokingly.

Musk could have been joking on that event, however he has used Dogecoin in observe at instances; in Might 2021, he introduced that his area exploration firm 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 stirred the marketplace for Dogecoin. After Musk tweeted “One phrase: Doge” in December 2020, the worth of Dogecoin shot up 17%, from $0.0039 to $0.0046. In February 2021 he has criticized Dogecoin’s wealth distribution; the worth subsequently fell by 20%. And following Musk’s buy of Twitter in October 2022, the social media web site briefly modified its emblem to the Doge meme in April 2023; Dogecoin rose greater than 20%.

Issues got here to a head in June 2023, when Musk, Tesla and SpaceX had been hit with a $258 billion lawsuit alleging they had been concerned in an extortion scheme to control the cryptocurrency’s value. Musk has sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, together with his legal professionals calling it a “fanciful work of fiction” based mostly on his “innocuous and infrequently foolish tweets” in regards to the cryptocurrency.

The way forward for Dogecoin

Maybe inevitably, Dogecoin’s success has impressed imitators. Different meme cash have emerged, together with Pepe (PEPE), Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), and Bonk (BONK), and DOGE ultimately spawned tens of millions of non secular successors over time.

In August 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation 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.

Might 2023 noticed the launch of the DRC-20 token commonplace, which allows the creation of ‘Doginals’, a singular digital asset just like 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 totally unique arcade-style beat-’em-up known as Tremendous Doginals.

The launch of the brand new commonplace noticed the variety of Dogecoin transactions rise to a brand new all-time excessive, though some core builders had been skeptical of the characteristic’s prospects, arguing that it had ‘not been thought via sufficient’.

Whereas Dogecoin’s builders are dedicated to the long-term aim of turning the meme coin into a totally functioning on a regular basis foreign money, many modern meme cash are open about the truth that they take a extra trial-and-error strategy; within the case of SHIB, it payments itself as “an experiment in decentralized, spontaneous neighborhood constructing.”

Others do not see the humorous facet; in June 2020, the Thai Securities and Alternate Fee ordered crypto exchanges to take away meme cash (alongside NFTs and social tokens), defining them as tokens that “don’t have any clear goal, content material or underlying worth [value]”, and whose value is determined by social media developments.

Dogecoin has had important ups and downs through the years, however because the DOGE neighborhood says, on the finish of the day, one factor is unchangeable: 1 DOGE = 1 DOGE.

Most just lately, as of this final replace in November 2024, Dogecoin has risen to a three-year excessive value because of the broader crypto market hype following the re-election of Donald Trump, a cryptocurrency advocate who has promised to assist the business.

Extra particularly, nonetheless, DOGE has been rising considerably because of the impending launch of a brand new authorities company known as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or sure, DOGE Trump has introduced that Musk shall be main the efforts together with Bitcoin-savvy entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, with a watch on cuts in authorities spending.

Trump even launched t-shirts with himself, Musk and a Doge picture on them. Amid the post-election hype, Dogecoin has rallied to round $0.43 on the time of writing, skyrocketing to a value degree not seen since 2021.

All through its lifespan, the Dogecoin neighborhood has remained lively and constant. If the aim of its proponents is to make Dogecoin a bona fide (or ‘bona fido’ maybe?) foreign money for transactions succeeds, it might very effectively persist effectively into the longer term. Wow.