Dogecoin

About

Dogecoin is an alternative cryptocurrency (altcoin) that uses the iconic Shibu Inu dog from the Doge meme as a mascot. Similar to Bitcoin and its derivatives, Dogecoin can be mined and exchanged for goods and services among the participants. Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin does not have a supply limit, meaning that an unlimited number of Dogecoin can theoretically be mined.

Origin

On November 27th, 2013, marketing professional Jackson Palmer posted a tweet that he would be "investing in Dogecoin."

In an interview with the tech news blog Motherboard,^[4] Markus revealed that he wished to create a cryptocurrency that can reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin, which had previously come under accusations of funding illegal online activities like the Silk Road drug marketplace. After Palmer reached out to Markus on Twitter, the pair launched the official Dogecoin website along with the new cryptocurrency on December 6th, 2013.

Dogecoin originally had a supply limit of 100 billion coins, which was removed in February 2014.

Developments

Following the launch of the official website,^[13] a slew of social media channels and referential webpages soon emerged for Dogecoin, including a Twitter^[10] account and a Facebook^[9] page, racking up more than 36,000 followers and 13,000 likes within the the first two months respectively. On December 8th, an entire subreddit community dedicated to the use of satirical cryptocurrency was launched at /r/dogecoin.^[8] .

Throughout the first weekend of December, Dogecoin was highlighted by a number of tech news sites and blogs, providing a further boost to the value of the satirical currency. By December 14th, an encyclopedic article describing the concept of "Dogecoin" had been submitted by Wikipedia^[15] editor CitationNeeded. On December 17th, the DogeCoin YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "You Can be a Dogecoin Millionaire!", featuring a sketch about the iconic Doge Shibu Inu dog Kabuso becoming a millionaire (shown below).

On December 19th, 2013, Dogecoin increased from $0.00026 to $0.002 in value, becoming the 7th-largest altcoin. Three days later, the currency crashed to $0.0003 after being heavily mined.^[5]

2013 Christmas Dogewallet Heist

On December 25th, 2013, several members of Dogecoin forum^[16] began reporting that their funds were being transferred to an unknown account identified as "DQT9WcqmUyyccrxQvSrjcFCqRxt8eVBLx8." Later that same day, the founders of the Dogecoin storage system Dogewallet, temporarily shut down the service and issued a statement^[17] confirming that a hacker had gained access to its file system and modified its pages to reroute the coin transfer to a static account, which have resulted in losses of 30 million Dogecoins, or up to $12,000 worth of the crypto-currency at the time of the incident. In addition, the Dogewallet administrators announced that it will immediately begin reimbursing all users affected by the hack. As a result of the hack, Dogecoin became the most mentioned altcoin on Twitter.

Growth in Transaction Volume

On January 14th, 2014, Redditor innominatargh pointed out that more Dogecoins were traded within one hour than there were total Dogecoins in circulation in a post submitted to the /r/dogecoin^[6] subreddit. That day, the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch^[7] blog posted a chart illustrating how Dogecoin transactions had eclipsed the volume of Bitcoin and other altcoins combined in the previous month (shown below).

Dogecoin Hype Video Competition

Between January and February 2014, the Dogecoin Foundation^[3] hosted a open submission contest for people to create a promotional video for the cryptocurrency. A total of 80 video entries^[18] were submitted and nine prizes were given out from a pool of over 800,000 dogecoin. The grand prize went to Redditor zimonitrome's chiptune-inspired promo music video "Ð is for Ðogecoin." (shown below)

SaveDogemas Fundraiser

Following the Dogewallet hack, a goodwill fundraiser campaign dubbed "SaveDogemas" was launched to help donate coins to those who lost them. Within the next month, it raised enough Dogecoin to cover all the losses.

Jamaican Bobsled Team Fundraiser

On January 19th, 2014, an Indiegogo^[2] page was created by members of the Jamaican Bobsled Team to fund their trip to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. On the same day, a fundraiser was launched by the Dogecoin Foundation^[14] for the bobsled team, which gathered $35,000 in donations in the first 24 hours.^[11] During this time, Dogecoin to Bitcoin exchange rate rose by 50%.

Indian Olympic Athlete Fundraiser

On January 29th, days before the opening of Sochi Winter Olympics, Washington Post^[19] reported on the uphill battles faced by three Indian athletes participating in the Games, such as having to compete without a national flag, due to International Olympic Committee sanctions stemming from a corruption scandal, and as a result, lack of enthusiastic support from the Indian Olympic Committee, including the costs of their trips.

India’s sports ministry agreed to help the athletes defray the costs of competing at Sochi. Keshavan received sufficient funds, but it has been unclear whether the other two competitors can afford to make the trip. Roshan Lal Thakur, secretary general of the Winter Games Federation of India, said he has finally received three-quarters of the$22,000 needed to send the alpine skier Himanshu Thakur and cross-country skier Nadeem Iqbal and their coaches to the Games. Still, he doesn’t know where he will get the rest.

“Maybe I have to borrow from friends,” he said. “Some miracle will happen, no?”

On the following day, Reddit's /r/dogecoin subreddit and the Dogecoin Foundation launched a Sochi fundraiser^[20] for Indian skiers Himanshu Thakur and Nadeem Iqbal, raising more than $6,000 within just three hours, including one donor who contributed three million Dogecoin, worth about $4,500 at the time of the donation.

Doge4Water in Kenya Fundraiser

In March 2014, the Dogecoin Foundation^[21] announced a new month-long initiative to collect 40 million dogecoin to fund the creation of two water wells in a town in eastern Kenya. Dubbed "Doge 4 Water," the charity drive will continue until "World Water Day" on March 22nd, when donations will be converted to dollars for transfer.

NASCAR Sponsorship

On March 17th, 2014, Redditor unicorn_butt_sex submitted a post calling for a Dogecoin sponsorship of NASCAR driver Josh Wise to the /r/dogecoin^[29] subreddit. In 10 days, the post gained more than 760 up votes and 390 comments. Later that day, Wise found out about the sponsorship campaign and posted a tweet^[30] thanking the Dogecoin community for their support. The Reddit post was subsequently updated with 3D-rendered mockups of a sponsored race car featuring the Dogecoin symbol on the front hood and “wow such racecar” on the bumper, which were designed by Redditor mimicthefrench (shown below).

On March 19th, Redditor lamamafia launched a paint job contest for Josh Wise's Dogecoin-sponsored race car on /r/NASCAR,^[28] where dozens of users submitted their custom entries for a 2014 Chevrolet SS car with various Doge-themed paint jobs. Over the course of the following week, Redditor NukaColaV13's entry emerged as the highest-voted submission (shown below).

On March 25th, Redditor One Good Shibe announced in /r/dogecoin^[22] that the community had raised 67.8 million Dogecoins (approximately $55,000) for the NASCAR fundraiser and that Wise would be racing a Doge-themed stock car at Aaron’s 499 in Talladega, Alabama on May 4th. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the crowdfunding campaign, including Motherboard,^[27]USA Today,^[23] The Guardian,^[24]CNET^[25] and The Verge.^[26]

Dogetipbot

Dogetipbot was launched by Redditor Josh Mohland in 2014 as a way to tip other Redditors with Dogecoin.

Shutdown

On May 8th, 2017, Mohland posted an announcement that all Dogetipbot coin balances had been wiped to 0 after he had spent all of his money and declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy.^[31] Additionally, he revealed that Dogetipbot would be shutdown entirely on December 15th. That day, Mohland posted an update that he had added an option for Dogetipbot users to request he pay them back, noting "I’ll have to buy them over time when I get paid, so this might take a while." That day, an article about the shutdown was published on Gizmodo.^[32]

2018 Peak

On January 5th, 2018, Dogecoin's market capitalization rose upwards of $1 billion according to CoinMarketCap^[33] (shown below).

That day, the cryptocurrency news blog Coindesk published an interview with Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer, who left the team in April 2015. In the interview, Palmer expressed concerns that Dogecoin's success could be a troubling sign for the market:

"The fact that most conversations happening in the media and between peers focus on the investment potential is worrying, as it draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based. I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap."

On January 8th, during the peak of 2017-2018 cryptocurrency bubble, Dogecoin briefly reached a peak of $0.017 per coin, with the market capitalization of the currency nearing 2 billion USD. Following the 2018 cryptocurrency crash, the price of the coin dropped to approximately $0.003 by March 2018.

Dogecoin Challenge

In early July 2020, Dogecoin saw a surge in market activity and its price as a result of Dogecoin Challenge on TikTok, participants of which promoted investment of Dogecoin to increase its value to one dollar.

On June 27th, 2020, TikToker^[34] tradertoks uploaded a video saying "what if everyone watching this video went and bought some Dogecoin" (shown below, left). The video gained over 27,100 likes in two weeks. On July 1st, TikToker^[35] jamezg97 uploaded a video suggesting the same thing and claiming that if $25 was invested the viewer could make $10,000 (shown below, right). The video garnered over 66,700 likes in a week.

Let's all get rich. Dogecoin is practically worthless. There are 800 million TikTok users. Invest just 25 dollars. Once the stock hits one dollar, you'll have ten grand. He says, "Tell everyone you know."

Following the spread of the challenge on TikTok, which was further assisted by the spread of the news on other social media, the price of Dogecoin rose from $0.0023 on July 5th to $0.0048 on July 8th, 2020, returning to $0.0031 by July 27th.

Early 2021 Dogecoin Boom

On January 27th, 2021, following the initial events of the GameStop stock surge, Redditor^[36] vavilover made a post in cryptocurrency-themed /r/SatoshiStreetBets subreddit suggesting that users should "pump" Dogecoin next, with the post gaining over 200 upvotes in one week. Later on the same day, Redditor^[37] lomac2w0 made a post in which they suggested starting a Dogecoin rally, with the post gaining over 9,600 upvotes in one week (shown below, top). Within one hour, Redditor^[38] DODGECOINPSU made a detail posted in which they hyped up the cryptocurrency, with the post gaining over 41,400 upvotes in /r/dogecoin subreddit prior to being removed by the moderators (partially shown below, bottom).

Between January 27th and 28th, following multiple posts and memes on Reddit and Twitter, the price of the currency rapidly rose by over 900% from $0.0076 to $0.0082. On January 28th, Elon Musk tweeted^[39] a mockup cover of a made-up magazine titled DOGUE, likely referencing Dogecoin and further assisting the growth.

In the early hours of February 4th, 2021, Elon Musk tweeted^[40] a photograph of a space rocket taking off, then writing^[41] "Doge" in the same thread (shown below, left). Following Musk's tweet, the price of Dogecoin rapidly rose from $0.0397 to $0.0505, with Musk proceeding to make several more tweets^[42][43][44] about Dogecoin (shown below, center and right).

The rise of trading activity in Dogecoin was accompanied by an increased number of memes about the cryptocurrency on Reddit and Twitter. Between January 27th and February 4th, the /r/dogecoin^[45] subreddit grew from 182,000 members to 887,000 members.

Search Interest

External References