What started as a parody coin has grown into a cryptocurrency of great value. Dogecoin has grown to command a market capitalization of nearly $8 billion. What’s more, Dogecoin’s popularity is gaining a lot of traction, and with its ever-growing community of followers, you’d be mistaken to think of it as a new crypto. So what is Dogecoin, and how has it come to make such a name for itself?
Dogecoin was co-created by Jackson Palmer, a product marketing manager at Adobe, and software engineer Billy Markus. It was set up in 2013 to provide a simplistic approach to cryptocurrency trading. Dogecoin got its name from Shiba Inu, a Japanese “doge”. At the time, the meme of Shiba Inu was trending. It would come up with phrases like “such tired” and “much wow.”
Nothing was ever serious with Dogecoin from the onset. The co-founders decided to make it undesirable by setting a limit of 100 billion coins so that it wouldn’t be taken seriously. Later on, the limit of coins in supply was removed to promote its use and discourage holding. While it began as a comical crypto, Dogecoin became a real option for folks who wanted to experiment with cryptocurrencies. This was mainly because it could be mined easily and cost little to buy.
Two weeks after launching, the Reddit Dogecoin channel had over 19,000 followers. Its price rose by 300% despite China’s restrictions applied to payment companies for using Bitcoin at the time. Currently, the crypto is trading on nearly all exchanges – you can convert DOGE to BTC at the best rate on the anonymous and convenient Godex platform.
Amidst all the circus around its origin, Dogecoin has grown to unimaginable heights. Let’s look at how it has come to gain popularity today.
The Dogecoin; The Origin
Dogecoin was forked from Lucky Coin, which came from Litecoin. Litecoin came from the mother of all cryptos, the Bitcoin. Dogecoin inherited Lucky Coin’s random reward scheme, where miners could receive nothing or thousands of coins for creating new blocks. This was done to discourage the use of Dogecoin. However, this idea did not really work in practice, as just a month after Dogecoin was created, its official website had more than 1 million visitors.
As the number of Dogecoin users continued to grow, the creators changed to a fixed block reward schedule. This gave the crypto a more feasible look as it now resembled Bitcoin and other similar cryptos.
In its early years, Dogecoin suffered a major hack that was aimed at DogeWallet. DogeWallet was a third-party wallet service provider. The hacker made away with 11 million Doge, the equivalent of $12,000 at the time. The infamous hack came to be known as the Christmas hack.
Dogecoin’s popularity in 2021 has also been anchored in its community social responsibility initiatives. For instance, the cryptocurrency community has donated generously to several drought relief initiatives and sports.
Celebrity Support Soars Dogecoin Popularity in 2021
Dogecoin has come to the cryptocurrency forefront in recent years, mostly due to celebrity endorsements. The Shiba Inu-inspired crypto has had a lot of backing from celebrities and billionaires who openly voiced their support for the crypto.
The list includes Carole Baskin, who starred in Netflix’s “Tiger King”, Gene Simmons, the co-singer of Kiss, and Kai Greene, a former professional bodybuilder. Even Mia Khalifa, formerly an adult movie actress, joins celebrities who have numerously talked highly of Dogecoin. Snoop Dogg has also thrown his weight behind the now-famous crypto.
However, the most notable Dogecoin supporter and influencer in recent years has been Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. The relationship between Musk and Dogecoin goes back to 2018. He sought the help of Jackson Palmer to deal with impersonating scam bots on Twitter. These scam bots were impersonating Musk to fraud people of their cryptos.
One time, Musk’s tweet suggested that Doge might be his favorite crypto because it was pretty cool. Recently, the SpaceX CEO shared a tweet with a meme of Dogecoin and joked that it could become the official currency of planet Mars.
Musk has been such a great influence on Dogecoin to the extent that his tweets caused the price of the cryptocurrency to jump by 25%. In January of 2021, he tweeted the image of a dog on the Dogue Magazine cover. The tweet sent Dogecoin prices up once again, and this time by 800%.
Mark Cuban, another Dogecoin billionaire fan, announced that his NBA team began to accept Dogecoin as payment for tickets and team items. He even bought his son some Dogecoins to teach him about economics and the crypto market.
Conclusion
In summary, the rise of Dogecoin has been the result of a mixture of factors. Its care for the community caused some growth of awareness, and so did the comical origin of the coin. Besides, celebrities haven’t lacked a word to encourage Dogecoin traders.
What’s more, Doge’s stability in the market makes you want to invest in it without a thought. Although we encourage caution in investment decisions, it is fair to say that Doge’s popularity is something we expect to last through 2021 and even longer.
