In short
- Dogecoin (DOGE) was created by Jackson Palmer in 2013 as a joke about the “doge” Shiba Inu meme.
- Fueled by influencers including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the cryptocurrency reached a peak market capitalization of $88 billion in May 2021.
What happens when a joke is taken seriously? In 2013, Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a way to mock the cryptocurrency industry. It is now one of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies. How did we get to this point?
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is cryptocurrency The name comes from the “doge” internet meme. It started out as a way to mock the cryptocurrency industry, but quickly built a vibrant community of enthusiasts.
A lot of progress has been made since 2013. During the 2021 cryptocurrency bull market, the market cap briefly reached $88 billion. Dogecoin celebrated its 10th anniversary on December 6, 2023.
Who made it?
Adobe employee Jackson Palmer couldn’t believe the sheer numbers. altcoin He jokingly sent a tweet saying he was investing in Dogecoin. Dogecoin is a fake coin based on a popular meme featuring a Shiba Inu.
Even though he posted the tweet as a joke, some people thought he was onto something. They said there was a real need for a lightweight token that could counter many controversial coins in the industry. So Palmer teamed up with programmer Billy Markus to make Dogecoin a reality.
“It was always like a hobby project or a side project,” Palmer said. decryption But a community quickly formed around the cryptocurrency, and it went much further than Palmer expected.
A brief history of Dogecoin
- December 2013 – Dogecoin was founded by Jackson Palmer.
- March 2014 – The Dogecoin community raised $55,000 in DOGE to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise.
- June 2014 – The Dogecoin Foundation was established to manage the currency code.
- April 2015 – Co-founder Jackson Palmer leaves Dogecoin.
- January 2018 – Dogecoin briefly surpassed $2 billion in market capitalization.
- July 2020 – A viral challenge on TikTok led to a surge in Dogecoin trading volume, pushing its price up 96%. The confusion of price fluctuations passes quickly.
- January 2021 – Dogecoin saw its market capitalization skyrocket to over $9 billion following a price surge orchestrated by the SatoshiStreetBets subreddit.
- May 2021 – The price of Dogecoin hit an all-time high of $0.73 ahead of Elon Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live.
- May 2021 – Dogecoin developers revealed that Elon Musk has been advising them since 2019.
- June 2021 – Cryptocurrency exchange coinbase List Dogecoin.
- August 2021 – The Dogecoin Foundation is relaunched after six years with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin joining its board of directors.
- November 2022: Elon Musk announces that he will upgrade Dogecoin with Vitalik Buterin, raising the price. Buterin has not yet confirmed this.
- May 2023: The DRC-20 standard was introduced, allowing the creation of “Doginals”, similar to Bitcoin ordinals, which are unique digital assets similar to non-fungible tokens (NFT).
Did you know?
Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus goes by the nickname ‘Shibetoshi Nakamoto’. This is a play on the Viceroy meme with Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin. He said in June 2020 Buy back with Dogecoin “It’s been 8 years since I promised myself I would never buy cryptocurrency again.”
What’s so special?
- 💨 Speed and Cost – Dogecoin offers fast transactions and low transaction fees, which are essential for widespread adoption.
- 💰 Unlimited supply – Dogecoin was originally limited to 100 billion coins, but was later changed to unlimited supply. This keeps prices relatively stable.
- 🤝 Community – The core of Dogecoin is its active community. The more than 300,000 members of the r/dogecoin subreddit are known for being friendly and welcoming people.
- 🤗 Charity – Same communities are known to come together for a good cause. They raised more than $25,000 in Dogecoin to help the cash-strapped Jamaican bobsled team compete in the 2014 Olympics. They have also worked with water charities to raise thousands to improve access to clean water in Kenya through the Doge4Water initiative.
How does Dogecoin work?
The advantage of Dogecoin’s endless supply of tokens is that the price remains relatively stable. The downside is that the prices are usually very low. Most people enter the cryptocurrency world for investment. They hope that if they hold certain tokens for a long time, they can sell them for a profit.
This is not the case with Dogecoin. The high token supply and low price make it unattractive for investors looking to hold the currency. The result is a highly liquid, free-flowing peer-to-peer digital currency.
What can you do with Dogecoin?
Dogecoin’s primary use is as an online tipping system. If you like what someone posts on the Dogecoin Reddit community, throw some Dogecoin at them. This is one of the things that gives the community a friendly reputation.
It can also be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies on multiple exchanges, which makes the currency unlikely to become a medium for people to move from one exchange to another.
From meme coins to Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency
Although it started as a joke, Dogecoin has gained a well-deserved reputation. The community’s philanthropy quickly attracted media attention. Dogecoin fans sponsored NASCAR driver Josh Wise in 2014, funded the Jamaican bobsled team at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and later raised thousands of dollars for a Kenyan water charity.
Co-founder Jackson Palmer doesn’t like how seriously people are taking Dogecoin. He left in 2015 after scammers ran off fun-loving members of the Dogecoin community. At the time, he said too many people were missing the purpose of tokens and jumping into a ‘get rich quick’ mentality.
When Dogecoin briefly reached a market capitalization of $2 billion in January 2018, Palmer remained critical. “I think having a market capitalization of over $1 billion for a currency that hasn’t released a software update in over two years says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general,” he said.
Dogecoin gained strength once again in 2020. This is partly thanks to the emergence of new social media platforms that trade on memes. In July 2020, a viral challenge on TikTok encouraged the app’s users to invest in the cryptocurrency, causing a brief surge in the price to the extent that the official Dogecoin account was affected. warn people “Stay safe. Be smart.”
At the same time, Dogecoin found a celebrity fan in billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Twitter Regarding cryptocurrency, he later revealed that he was joking.
Musk has made Dogecoin practical from time to time, although it may have been a joke at the time. In May 2021, he announced that his space exploration company, SpaceX, would launch a “Doge-1” satellite to the moon at a cost “paid for by Doge.”
The Tesla CEO’s tweet also appears to have moved the Dogecoin market. After Musk tweeted In December 2020, “One Word: Doge,” the price of Dogecoin surged 17% from $0.0039 to $0.0046. He said in February 2021 criticize Distribution of wealth in Dogecoin; Afterwards, the price plummeted 20%. And after Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, the social media site briefly changed its logo to a Doge meme in April 2023. Dogecoin surged more than 20%.
Matters came to a head in June 2023 when Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX were hit with a $258 billion lawsuit alleging they participated in a racketeering scheme to manipulate cryptocurrency prices. Musk has tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, with his lawyers calling it “fantasy fiction” based on his “naive and often foolish tweets” about cryptocurrencies.
The future of Dogecoin
Perhaps inevitably, Dogecoin’s success inspired imitators. Other so-called “meme coins” have emerged, including Pepe (PEPE), Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), and Bonk (BONK).
In August 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation was re-established with advisory board members including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus, Dogecoin core developer Max Keller, and Neuralink CEO Jared Birchall.
In May 2023, the DRC-20 token standard was released, allowing the creation of “Doginals”, unique digital assets similar to non-fungible tokens and based on Bitcoin ordinal numbers. The launch of the new standard has sent Dogecoin trading to record highs, but some key developers have remained skeptical of the feature’s prospects, claiming it has “not been thought through enough.”
While Dogecoin’s developers are working to achieve their long-term goal of turning the meme coin into a fully functioning everyday currency, many newer meme coins are open about the fact that they are taking more of a trial-and-error approach. In the case of SHIB, it bills itself as a “decentralized voluntary community-building experiment.”
Other people don’t see the funny side. In June 2020, Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission ordered cryptocurrency exchanges to delist MEM Coin. NFT and social tokens) as tokens that have “no clear purpose, substance or fundamental (value)” and whose price varies depending on social media trends.
It is debatable whether Dogecoin itself will continue to exist, or whether it is destined to burn down like it did after its 2018 highs. But as the Dogecoin community says, at the end of the day, one thing is immutable: 1 DOGE = 1 DOGE.
The Dogecoin community has remained active and loyal throughout its lifespan. Dogecoin bona fide (Or should we say ‘good faith’?) If a currency for trading is successful, it could continue for a long time to come. wow.