A little story of Dogecoin, the Shiba Inus’ cryptocurrency

First of all, this article should be share in Comic Sans font, because that’s an official symbol of the original Doge meme. And that’s exactly where the successful cryptocurrencyA digital currency running on a blockchain and built with cryptography. Contrary to central-bank issued currency, cryptocurrency issuance rules are... Dogecoin (DOGE) comes from.

We can start our story back in 2005 when the first ingredient for this currency appeared: the misspelled word “Doge” instead of “Dog”. That mistake with an intended purpose was part of the chapter “Biz Cas Fri 1” from the Homestar Runner’s puppet show, in which Homestar calls Strong Bad his “d-o-g-e” while trying to distract him.

But it wouldn’t be till 2010 that Kabosu would do her great entrance. Wondering who is Kabosu? You’ve already seen her, everywhere and a lot of times. She’s in the logo of Dogecoin because she’s the adorable Shiba Inu whose funny picture originated the popular Doge meme.

Kabosu is from Japan and happily lives with her rescuer, the kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato. She was the one who shared first the photo in her personal blog. Few months after that, people on Reddit and Tumblr started to mix the word “Doge”, the Comic Sans font, and the Kabosu’s picture to craft some funny reflections and confessions. The popularity of it exploded especially in 2012: Doge was born as a long-lasting meme.

Dogecoin appears

And then, almost out of the blue, someone on a boring day of 2013 bought the Dogecoin.com domain, photoshopped the logo, and scattered some Comic Sans text around the web. All this because he promised to their friends, with sarcasm, he was going to invest in “Dogecoin” because it was the next big thing.  Just like that born the idea by Jackson Palmer, a marketer for Adobe Systems in Sydney (Australia).

Not much later, the software engineer at IBM Billy Markus, from Oregon (USA), discovered the little webpage via IRC chat. He liked the idea and he got it touch with Palmer to make it a reality, aka, making a functional cryptocurrency and not just a funny website.

As a result, Dogecoin (DOGE) was officially launched on December 6, 2013, with its own blockchain and an original total supply of 100 billion doges (that would change to an unlimited supply later). Palmer and Markus decided to fork it from the now-defunct Luckycoin (LKY) and the silver of cryptocurrencies, Litecoin (LTC).

This brand new altcoin promises a blockA collection of cryptocurrency transactions. Every few minutes (or seconds, depending on the blockchain) one miner or validator verifies the... time (and confirmed transactions) of just one minute and, in the beginning, offered random rewards for its miners. Its mining differed from BitcoinBitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency. It was created in 2009, by an anonymous founder or group of founders... More and company in the sense this system is ASIC resistant, which means you can mine doges only with GPU and an ordinary PC, and you won’t need a specialized machine.

Then, are indeed people mining this? Yes. And they’re buying and selling with +200 market pairs in numerous exchanges, according to CoinMarketCap (CMC). Why would they do that if this is just a meme? Oh, c’mon, isn’t Bitcoin, but it’s more than a meme. Its main purpose is working as a reward for content creators in different platforms, and remarkably on Reddit, where it has its own tip bot and still a huge community.

To date, Dogecoin has +355 million of dollars in market capitalization and a price of 0.0028 USD per token. Its ATH occurred in 2018, with 0.018 USD per token, and CMC calculates a total ROI (Return of Investment) of +403% since its release.

Facing some pet-brelms

The creators have said the popularity of this currency, which was a mere hobby project for them, didn’t even let them accumulate a nice stash of doges in the early times. It had a lot of miners and support since the beginning, but it’s faced some problems as well.

In its early times (2013), millions of coins were stolen from the Dogewallet, when a hacker “gained access to the platform’s filesystem and modified its send/receive page to send any and all coins to a static addressAn address is a blockchain equivalent to a bank account number in the traditional financial system, or an email address.... More” (Chohan). Fortunately, the community joined then to launch the initiative “Save Dogemas”, in order to donate coins to those who lost them in the cyber-attack. They were able to recover their losses in just one month.

A couple of years later, Jackson Palmer announced it would leave from the crypto-community, and he still stays like it. By 2017, sadly, the tip bot in Reddit closed because its creator declared bankruptcy, and some of the users lost their doges in the system. But a new one was created then, and it’s functional this year.

Criticism and mockery have not failed either with this currency. However, its community stays strong.  

Facing (and giving) doges of love

Dogecoin it’s been the proof that cryptos need some marketing. The creators thought about it: what it’d be more accessible than a meme and dogs? Everybody loves memes and dogs, so, why don’t mix them with a cryptocurrency? And voilà!

The adoption of this particular currency has spread like wildfire, even if some others “meme cryptocurrencies” have come before and after; like BBQcoin, Cheesecoin, EvilCoin, or JesusCoin. Most of them are unknown or dead by now, but Dogecoin has prevailed and remains in the top 50 per market capitalization.

There are more than 100 ATMs all around the world to exchange it for cash, and you can even spend doges in products and services like food, hosting, games, comics, books, gambling, clothes, music, art, and yeah, houses.

On the other hand, the Dogecoin community is known for giving that love back as well, in the form of fundraising campaigns. They raised 50,000 USD for the Jamaican Bobsled Team in 2014, which had qualified for, but could not afford to go to, the Sochi Winter Olympics. Just months after that, Doge4Water succeeded to raise 30,000 USD for the African non-profit Charity: Water.  

This difficult 2020 some members of the community have been involved in fundraising campaigns to help in the recovery of Australia wildfires and COVID-19.

Other random facts about doges of love? Some tiktokers managed to increase the price of Dogecoin by buying in mass in July, and this is the favorite crypto of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink.

Remember, this a digital currency favored by Shiba Inus (and Elon Musk) worldwide. Probably the longest-lasting cryptomeme and the more expensive, too.

Wanna trade BTCAn abbreviation for Bitcoin., ETH, and other tokens? You can do it safely on Alfacash! And don’t forget we’re talking about this and a lot of other things on our social media.

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