Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that turned a joke into an explosion of value that can start a whole revolution.
Dogecoin is undoubtedly one of the most famous cryptocurrencies in the world. All this despite being a cryptocurrency created as a publicly declared joke since its foundation but that many people have been carried away by the media and speculative scandal around it, without realizing that it is a cryptocurrency that has no roadmap or technological improvements, and was only created as a meme.
The curious start of the Dogecoin project
Dogecoin is a very curious cryptocurrency phenomenon, one whose success has surprised everyone from the beginning, including its creators. First of all, the public image of the coin is the well-known meme of a Shiba Inu dog, known as “Kabosu”. This dog is owned by a Japanese kindergarten teacher named Atsuko Sato.
Satō, who started a blog about life with her pets and family in 2010, never thought she would rise to world fame until a photo of “kabosu”, Was chosen by a group of 4chan anons to carry out a spam attack on the Reddit thread, r / Murica. The action is such that it is known as one of the great wars of 4chan vs Reddit.
Around the same time that this was happening on 4chan and Reddit, two programmers set about taking the meme to a new level: make it the heart of a cryptocurrency. The idea is to deliver another coup de grace in the meme war that has begun and at the same time make fun of the cryptocurrency fever that was already on the rise. That's how Billy Markus, a former IBM worker, and Jackson Palmer, an Australian who headed the Adobe System marketing department, started their work.
This pair of friends created this coin with the aim of making fun of the cryptocurrency fever. Thus, on December 6, 2013, the first version of Dogecoin was launched, and the fame of the meme-coin spread like wildfire on the forums, especially 4chan where the community received the idea with grace. The unexpected? The meme coin increased its capitalization by 300% in just 15 days. And that would only be the beginning of something that to this day still continues to cause a strong impact in the crypto world.
An unexpected growth in value
The joke garnered even more attention when, by December 21, 2013, it reached a capitalization of more than $ 20 million. At this point, Markus and Palmer were already at the forefront of an unprecedented wave of growth, the first to be experienced by Dogecoin. Thus, on February 15, 2014, the market capitalization of Dogecoin reached 76 million dollars.
After that, the increase in the value of cryptocurrency continued with a slow growth, something that was linked to its high issuance. However, the 2017 boom made itself felt and Dogecoin did not escape the explosion. Between April and June 2017, the capitalization value of the coin changed from $ 36 million to $ 367 million. A rise that plummeted in September 2017 when it reached a capitalization of $ 90 million. It was clear that Dogecoin was heavily influenced by episodes of price speculation, driven by the high in other cryptocurrencies.
The history of repeating itself between December 2017 and January 2018, when the cryptocurrency went from $ 235 million in capitalization to $ 1.700 billion in capitalization, which fell with the crypto winter of 2018 to $ 273 million in August 2018. Since then, Doge has maintained a sea of calm regarding the value of its cryptocurrency and capitalization. In fact, the value of its currency fell as the market flooded with it, due to its infinite issuance.
However, one figure would change everything, Elon Musk, the well-known billionaire creator of PayPal and companies like Tesla and SpaceX, would shake the crypto world with a curious tweet in favor of Dogecoin.
Since then, the growth of Dogecoin has been unstoppable, with a rise in its value that has taken it to the point of reaching a capitalization of more than 7.000 million dollars, and being considered one of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies in the crypto world. Certainly what Markus and Palmer started as a joke was now more valuable than many companies and even entire countries at the capitalization level.
How does Dogecoin work?
Dogecoin was created thanks to a fork of the code of Litecoin, so it uses the Proof of Work algorithm using the scrypt hash and using the ability to merged mining. In this way they managed to make their network much more secure, even guaranteeing that both currencies can be mined together using this capacity.
Dogecoin has among its many attractions the way in which it can be mined. First, the resolution time for each block is relatively low, one minute to be exact. Second, each block has quite a large issue, currently being more than 10.000 DOGE per block.
Additionally, the issuance of the currency is unlimited. which together with its bulky emission per block, leads its miners to receive large amounts of the currency, and in moments of hype, the final value of their holdings multiplies extraordinarily.
Dogecoin technology
Like the rest of the cryptocurrencies, its technology is based on the blockchain, that is, a huge database that is responsible for storing the data of each transaction in a completely unalterable way. Its blockchain is completely decentralized, because in it, all the information of each of the transactions that have been carried out to date is stored, made up of each of the nodes of its network.
But beyond this Dogecoin is not a technologically advanced currency. In fact, we can say that the coin is in "frozen" mode since its development team is practically non-existent, and the development on the project only seeks to avoid serious security problems. In fact, most of these arrangements come from projects like Bitcoin y Litecoin, with which it has a great resemblance, and is one of the things for which Dogecoin is most attacked: there is no innovation of any kind.
This, however, may change, especially due to the great interest that the currency has begun to arouse today, and very especially, because Elon Musk seems interested in helping to make it a much more serious and powerful option to make payments.
On the other hand, it has compatibility with 3 types of wallet:
- Software wallet: Dogecoin Core and MultiDoge are the official software wallets of the project. Dogecoin Core is a special wallet that turns your computer into a node and downloads all the information contained in the blockchain, so it can take a while to download it. The second wallet, Multi Doge, only stores the information necessary to be able to use Dogecoin without turning your computer into a node.
- Online wallets: Here at Bit2Me, our Bit2Me Wallet offers support for this cryptocurrency so that you can buy, sell or store your DOGE without problems.
- Hardware Wallets: They are those hardware devices that are kept disconnected from the Internet to guarantee greater security. Trezor and Ledger have long offered support for the coin.
Dogecoin: a real cryptocurrency or just a very expensive joke
Without a doubt, one of the things that has played the most in favor of this coin is the solid community that was formed, attracted by the carefree and funny tone, without its creators generating expectations around the project. It was these elements that in one way or another led him to his rise.
However, many in the community wonder if Dogecoin really is a real cryptocurrency or just a joke filled with a lot of speculation. The reality is that many believe that Dogecoin is no longer a joke and, despite its beginnings, it is a full-fledged cryptocurrency. Its blockchain has a level of mining that makes it secure, it has never been rewritten, it has never been attacked in any way and its software is maintained with updates, the last one being from February 2021.
On the other hand, it has detractors who say things like: Dogecoin was born as a joke and having that image does not add up to be considered a serious project.
Another weak point can be innovation, and that is that Dogecoin does not innovate, it does not create anything new, it only copies what Litecoin and Bitcoin can, adapts it and puts it to work. At this point, the lack of creation of new services hinders the growth of the project. Add to that the lack of a dedicated development team and the problem becomes more acute.
In addition to this, there is the community and the fact that it is reactive to manipulation. Seeing this is currently very simple, just keep an eye on Elon Musk's timeline, see what he says about Doge and look at the immediate behavior of the market in the cryptocurrency. Yes, Elon praises Dogecoin, the coin rises like foam and, if he says something wrong, it begins to sink even into the ocean of its defenders.
We are left with the question Is there hope for Dogecoin? Many think that there is. According to its advocates, Dogecoin has shown that there is a strong community that trusts and is committed to cryptocurrency. That same community is the one that will not allow it to fall, and the value of the cryptocurrency both technologically and financially to continue and take hold. Far from what personalities like Elon Musk can say, the best Dogecoin card is this, and with the growth it has had, many will already be considering what will be done so that Dogecoin continues to bark and wag its tail in the crypto world.
Curiosities and other eccentricities about Dogecoin
Today we know that any project to be successful needs to bond emotionally with those who follow closely and Dogecoin is not only a currency with history, but it is also a charitable organization.
Little by little, what started as a joke turned into something more serious, so they decided to finance the trip of the Jamaican Bobsleigh team to the Winter Olympics in 2014, with a budget of more than US $ 30.000, this after not being able to participate during two competitions (Torino 2006 and Vancouver 201).
The Jamaican team is a curiosity in the Winter Games, as they are a team from a tropical island in winter games where they slide a sled through ice tunnels, and despite how funny it can be, they are considered one of the best teams in their style during the start and have become among the top 20 teams in the world. A financial meme financing a situation like this has been considered, by many, another meme.
Despite the fact that its creator no longer works on the project, this coin continues due to its decentralized nature and is marking history with its value that has multiplied over time. It will be interesting to see your progress over time.
Perhaps the highest level curiosity and eccentricity at Dogecoin is Elon Musk. Elon, has become the most "loved" person within Doge, as his tweets bode well for a price spike in the cryptocurrency (rather a direct rocket boost to price). And with images like these, you can already imagine the level of what we are talking about.
We didn't mean to say it, but we will: IT'S DOGE!
No one knows what Dogecoin holds, not even Elon himself, but what is clear is that money is a technology created to communicate, in this case value, in our society. The meme is a communicative element that is widely implemented in our society and, perhaps for this reason, the “memeconomy” is taking on such an important role with the mass use of cryptocurrencies.