The total value of dogecoins in circulation is nearly $ 50 billion – not bad for a digital currency that started out as a joke.
Like all cryptocurrencies, dogecoin is a digital currency that can be bought and sold as an investment and spent as money.
Although each crypto is unique, it shares some similarities with its better-known colleagues – its code is based on the litecoin script, for example. But it has some key differences.
Unlike bitcoin, which has set 21 million as the finite sum of digital currency, dogecoin has 129 billion coins in circulation and will continue to make available new currency blocks every year. This is part of the reason why a dogecoin is currently valued at about three tenths, and a bitcoin is worth about $ 62,000.
Although cryptos are gaining more acceptance as a currency for purchasing goods, dogecoin does not have much use in the real world. It has several niche markets, including the use of dogecoin to give advice to artists online.
And its main differentiator – its active online community – is what makes the odd currency so much fun. The group, which is active on Reddit, raised money (in dogecoin, of course) for charitable causes, and in 2014 successfully funded a sponsorship to get Nascar driver Josh Wise to advertise dogecoin on his car.
How did it start?
Dogecoin was created on December 6, 2013, by a pair of software engineers as a joke.
Billy Markus, an IBM programmer in Portland, Oregon, set out to differentiate his cryptocurrency from bitcoin, which was full of mystery with an anonymous creator and at the time attracted a small niche group. Markus wanted the cryptocurrency to be open to the masses, according to Chohan.
The website nods to its joking origins at the top: its Shiba Inu mascot is the first image on the page, mimicking the meme that inspired him, featuring the same dog surrounded by a pile of broken Comic Sans text. .
On dogecoin.com, his mascot is subtitled: “Dogecoin is an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency, favored by Shiba Inus worldwide.”
Why is it so popular all of a sudden?
Dogecoin is no longer a joke. Its popularity has grown – astronomically, this year – partially stimulated by the general adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
But Elon Musk is the strongest and most important supporter of dogecoin. One of his bizarre tweets to his 50 million followers can send the crypto growing. This happened on Friday, when Musk wrote on Twitter “Doge Barking at the moon” and shared a photo of a painting by Spanish artist Joan Miró, entitled “Dog Barking at the Moon”.
Dogecoin also enjoyed a kind of cult on the Reddit message board, where a popular group – not unlike the WallStreetBets group behind the GameStop rally – decided earlier this year to propel its value “towards Month”. Dogecoin has increased by over 600% as a result of this action.
Whether or not it is a smart investment remains an active question. The more actively traded and widely accepted Bitcoin is subject to extreme volatility, so that even the dogecoin could collapse without warning. But its growth this year has been staggering.