Dogecoin: The Cryptocurrency That Started As A Joke
Dogecoin (DOGE) is a cryptocurrency that is breaking records now even though it was launched as a joke. The funny background of the coin is inspired by the Japanese breed of dogs Shiba Inu which was previously an internet meme. Dogecoin now has a strong community that continues to attract attention through donations. It is among the favorite coins for the users since the transaction fees are very low at 0.01 US dollars.
Dogecoins History
Dogecoin (DOGE) was launched in 2013 in December as a fun currency by the only programmer at that time Billy Markus from Portland Oregon. Shortly after the launch, he was supported by Jackson Palmer who brought domain Dogecoin.com.
In the beginning, it was openly stated that this cryptocurrency is made only for fun. This was very clear once you entered the homepage of the altcoin and the videos for it as well. The homepage of Dogecoin (DOGE) was written in Comic Sans and the videos were made amateur-style. However, the cryptocurrency quickly found many fans on the platforms like Reddit and the amateur-style of the altcoin became its trademark.
On December 19, 2013, Dogecoin increased up to 300 percent in less than 3 hours and only a few days later the cryptocurrency lost about 80 percent of its value again. One of the reasons for this was that the Chinese Bank was no longer allowed to trade with Bitcoin and the miners took advantage of the fact that Dogecoin (DOGE) had little mining difficulty. Just a week later, Dogecoin had its first hack and millions of the coins were stolen from the online wallet DogeWallet. However, the community was strong and launched an appeal for donations. Two months later, the stolen credit was completely replaced for the victims and this was a strong sign that the community is very strong as well.
In February 2014, the first Dogecoin machine was installed in Vancouver and a few months later 2 Bitcoin machines in Tijuana also started supporting Dogecoin.
The cryptocurrency already had a market cap of 60 million US dollars at that time. in 2015, Jackson Palmer withdrew from the project since he didn’t want to be associated with a fun currency with a high market capitalization. In 2018, the cryptocurrency reached a market capitalization of 2 billion USD.
Dogecoin Tokens
At the beginning, the maximum possible Dogecoin was limited to 100 billion but this limit was later lifted in 2014. There are now more than 115 billion dogecoins in circulation and the number is a subject to inflation since new tokens are distributed to the respective miners for every new block.
Donations
In the past, the entire community repeteadely drew attention to itself through fundraising campaigns in which multiple projects were supported. In addition to the reimbursement of the hacked coins in 2013, the platform took the following actions:
- The Jamaican Bobsleigh Team was supported for the Winter Olympics 2014. The community collected more than 36,000 US dollars in order to help the team travel to Russia and participate in the Olympics.
- More than 30,000 USD were collected under the name Doge4Water money which were collected for a well in Kenya from 4,000 differnet donors.
- The community also supported NASCAAR driver Josh Wise with more than 55,000 USD collected and he also drove with the logo of the cryptocurrency for some of the races.
Value
Dogecoin is in the top 40 when it comes to ranking cryptocurrencies around the world and now has a market cap of around $283,100,035 making it a huge player in the crypto world. The value of the cryptocurrency dropped over the years and saw a decrease in popularity mainly because of other crypocurrencies’ crashes and clampdowns in regulations. This being said, the coin maintained a long level of relevance and it is now available on numerous exchanges such as Bittrex, Poloniex and HitBTC. Dogecoin will strengthen its legitimacy thanks to its native crypto wallet which is available to enhance the usage of the currency.
Final Words
The online community for this cryptocurrency is all set to send the coin shooting upwards. As more merchants join and start accepting the cryptocurrency, the future of Dogecoin looks bright. More users that belong to different communities also started embracing this tipping ecosystem where the dogecoins have a leading role to play out. The user adoption rate and trading value are on a steady rise.
