Dogecoin (code: DOGE, symbol: Ð and D) is a cryptocurrency with an image of the Shiba Inu dog from the meme “Doge” as its logo. Introduced as a joke on December 6, 2013, Dogecoin quickly developed its own online community and reached a capitalization of $60 million in January 2014.
| Date of creation | December 6, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Creators | Billy Markus, Jackson Palmer |
| Ticker symbol | Ð |
| Characteristics of the chain | |
|---|---|
| Mean | Yes |
| Hash function | Scrypt-based |
| Maximum quantity | Infinite |
| Block size | 9,896 KBytes |
Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin had a quick initial production schedule: 100 billion coins were in circulation by mid-2015, with an additional 5.25 billion coins each year thereafter. As of June 30, 2015, the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined. Although there are few consumer commercial applications, the currency has grown in popularity. Dogecoin is an altcoin-type cryptocurrency and the first and main meme coin.
Overview and History of Dogecoin
Dogecoin was created by Portland programmer Billy Markus, who hoped to create a fun cryptocurrency that could reach more people than Bitcoin. In addition, he wanted to distance himself from the controversial history of the other pieces. Meanwhile, Jackson Palmer, a member of Adobe’s marketing department in Sydney, was encouraged on Twitter by a student at the Front Range Community College to make the idea a reality.
After receiving several mentions on Twitter, Palmer purchased the domain dogecoin.com and added a home screen, featuring the coin’s logo and Comic Sans text. Markus saw the site linked to an IRC discussion forum and set out to create the currency after contacting Palmer. Markus based Dogecoin on an existing cryptocurrency, Luckycoin which presents a random reward received for mining a block, this feature was later replaced by a static block reward in March 2014. In turn, Luckycoin is based on Litecoin which also uses Scrypt technology in its proof-of-work algorithm. The use of Scrypt means that miners cannot use SHA-256 mining equipment as with Bitcoin and that creating FPGAs and ASIC circuits dedicated to mining is complicated. Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6, 2013. The network was originally supposed to produce 100 billion Dogecoins, but it was later announced that it would produce an infinite number of Dogecoins.
On December 19, 2013, Dogecoin jumped nearly 300 percent in 72 hours, from $0.00026 to $0.000.95 with a volume of billions of Dogecoins per day. This growth took place at a time when Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies were impacted by China’s decision to ban Chinese banks from investing in the Bitcoin economy. Three days later, Dogecoin experienced its first major crash by falling by 80% due to this event and due to the presence of large computer pools exploiting the little power necessary to mine it.
On December 25, 2013, Dogecoin’s first major theft occurred when millions of coins were stolen during a hack of the online cryptocurrency wallet platform Dogewallet. The hacker gained access to the platform’s file system and changed its send/receive page to send all the parts to a static address. This hacking incident generated tweets about Dogecoin, making it the most mentioned altcoin on Twitter at the time, although it was a negative event.
To help those who lost funds on Dogewallet after its breach, the Dogecoin community launched an initiative called “SaveDogemas” to help donate coins to those who had been stolen. About a month later, a sufficient sum was donated to cover the amount of all the stolen parts. In January 2014, the trading volume of Dogecoin briefly surpassed that of Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies, but its market capitalization remained considerably lower than that of Bitcoin. In April 2015 Jackson Palmer announced that he was taking an “extended leave” from the cryptocurrency community. As of April 25, 2015, Dogecoin had a market capitalization of $13.5 million.
In January 2018, capitalization reached $2 billion. The latter declined significantly thereafter, reaching just over $250 million in January 2019.
In July 2020, the price of Dogecoin soared following a TikTok trend to raise the price of the coin to $1.
On May 4, 2021, the value of Dogecoin exceeded the symbolic barrier of $0.50 for the first time, an increase of more than 20,000% in one year.
On May 9, 2021, SpaceX announced a ride-sharing mission to the Moon funded entirely by Dogecoin, becoming the first cryptocurrency-funded space mission. Elon Musk confirmed this news via Twitter. DOGE-1 will be a 40kg minor rideshare payload on Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission in the first quarter of 2022.
Fundraising
The community and the Dogecoin Foundation have encouraged fundraising for charities and other notable causes. On January 19, 2014, the community organized a fundraiser to raise fifty thousand dollars for the Jamaican bobsleigh team, which had qualified for the Sochi Winter Olympics but could not afford to attend. On the second day, a sum of thirty-six thousand dollars in Dogecoins was donated and the exchange rate from Dogecoin to Bitcoin increased by 50%. The community also raised funds for the only Indian athlete present in Sochi, luger Shiva Keshavan.
Doge4Water
Inspired by Winter Olympics fundraising and smaller successes, the Dogecoin Foundation, led by Eric Nakagawa, began collecting donations for the construction of a well in Kenya’s Tana River basin, in cooperation with Charity: Water. They decided to collect a total of forty million Dogecoins (thirty thousand dollars at the time) before World Water Day (March 22). The campaign was successful, it collected donations from more than four thousand donors, including an anonymous benefactor who donated fourteen million Dogecoins (about eleven thousand dollars).
NASCAR
On March 25, 2014, the community managed to raise 67.8 million Dogecoins (about $55,000 at the time) in an effort to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise. Wise presented a painting illustration sponsored by Dogecoin and Reddit at Talladega Superspeedway. On May 4, 2014, Wise and his car were presented for nearly a minute, during which race commentators talked about Dogecoin and the crowdfunding effort, he finished the twentieth and narrowly avoided several wrecks.
On May 16, 2014, Wise won a spot in the Sprint All-Star Race through an online vote by defeating Danica Patrick, mainly due to the efforts of the Dogecoin and Reddit Community. He finished the race in fifteenth position, the last car in the race. At the next Coca-Cola 600 race, Wise wore a Dogecoin/Reddit.com helmet.
Wise later announced that it would be using the car again on the Toyota/Save Mart 350 as a thank you to the community and the GEICO 500. He finished twenty-eighth in the race in part because of a refueling problem; He was in twelfth place after a gas stop, but the petrol can did not engage long enough, resulting in a second pit stop that led him to the back of the pack. The developer of the video game NASCAR ’14 has announced that it plans to add the Dogecoin car as a driveable car in an upcoming DLC.
Use of Dogecoin and exchanges
Several online exchanges offer DOGE/BTC and DOGE/LTC exchanges. Three exchanges, Mengmengbi, Bter and BTC38, offer DOGE/CNY trading. On January 8, 2014, AltQuick.co was the first exchange to launch the DOGE/USD exchange. On January 30, 2014, the Canadian exchange Vault of Satoshi also announced trading of DOGE/USD and DOGE/CAD. In February 2014, Hong Kong-based exchange Asia Nexgen announced that it would support the trading of Dogecoins in all major currencies. China’s BTC38 exchange also added support to the Dogecoin exchange, increasing the market capitalization over 24 hours. On the first day of trading, Dogecoin was the second most traded currency on the platform, after Bitcoin. In September 2014, the British exchange Yacuna began offering DOGE/EUR and DOGE/GBP trading.
On January 31, 2014, trading volume on major exchanges was valued at $1.05 million. The market capitalization was $60 million. Three exchanges accounted for the majority of the volume: Bter (60%), Cryptsy (23%) and Vircurex (10%). The most traded currency pairs were DOGE/BTC (50%), DOGE/CNY (44%), and DOGE/LTC (6%).
Trading of physical and tangible items in exchange for DOGE takes place in online communities such as Reddit and Twitter, where users frequently share currency information.
Dogecoin’s first ATM was introduced at Vancouver’s Coinfest in February 2014. Two Bitcoin ATMs supporting Dogecoins and other altcoins opened in Tijuana on March 17, 2014.
Dogecoin has also been used in an attempt to sell a house and has been used in the pornography industries and poker.
Dogetipbot was a cryptocurrency transaction service used on popular sites such as Reddit and Twitch.tv. It allowed users to send Dogecoins to other users via commands or via Reddit comments, support for Twitch.tv and Twitter had been discontinued earlier. The service was launched in 2013 on Reddit. The trademark “dogetipbot” was officially registered on August 19, 2014. In November 2014, dogetipbot’s team of developers raised $445,000 in venture capital funds. In May 2017, Dogetipbot was stopped and taken offline after its creator declared bankruptcy. This has left many Dogetipbot users losing their coins stored in Dogetipbot’s system.
DogeAPI was the popular first digital wallet for Dogecoins. It was sold in August 2014 to the developer of Blockchain APIs, Block.io.
Price and capitalization trends
| Dogecoin Course | |
|---|---|
| Date | Approximate price in $ on the CoinMarketCap platform. |
| January 1, 2014 | $0.000,351 |
| January 1, 2015 | $0.000,180 |
| January 1, 2016 | $0.000,154 |
| January 1, 2017 | $0.000,225 |
| January 1, 2018 | $0.007,908 |
| January 1, 2019 | $0.002,359 |
| January 1, 2020 | $0.002,029 |
| January 1, 2021 | $0.005,396 |
| January 28, 2021 | $0.022,550 |
| February 4, 2021 | $0.047,076 |
| April 16, 2021 | $0.398,000 |
| May 14, 2021 | $0.541,900 |
Faucets
The jocular nature of Dogecoin fueled the concept of cryptographic faucets, or waterbowls, as the community named them. Cryptographic faucets are applications or sites that dispense small amounts of coins. The name “faucet” implies a small reward, as do small drops of water dripping from a leaky faucet. The purpose of a crypto tap was to introduce the concept of crypto and Dogecoin to people around the world by offering free cryptocurrency to people so that they would take the time to learn about and invest in digital assets.
Mining parameters
The implementation of Dogecoin differs from Litecoin in several parameters. Dogecoin has a block time of one minute, unlike Litecoin’s 2.5 minutes.
Several cases of using an employer’s or university’s computer to exploit Dogecoin have been discovered.
The size of the Dogecoin blockchain was 38.8 gigabytes in October 2019.
Decentralization
As of October 2018, the number of active nodes on the Dogecoin network was around 20,000. Most of the mining work is done by mining farms and not individuals.
Number of Dogecoin
Unlike deflationary cryptocurrencies, which limit the number of coins that can be produced, the number of Dogecoins that can be produced is unlimited, making it an inflationary coin. It was originally supposed to have a limit of 100 billion coins, which would have already represented many more coins than the major digital currencies allowed. In February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that this limit would be removed and there would be no cap, which should result in a steady reduction in its inflation rate over a long period of time.
References (sources)
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