Dogecoin: The Unbelievable Story behind The Joke Altcoin

Cryptocurrencies are one the most fascinating technologies doing the rounds in the cybersphere today. Of all of the pioneering coins and currencies out there, one fable of an altcoin from circa 2013-14 survives to tell a new tale.

Dogecoin Is the Name of This Crypto

Built for a generation of investors who were blinded by the “commercial dollar-equated value” of crypto coins, Dogecoin has invented simply a thought-provoking meme to end the madness of the gold rush-like way that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and every other crypto were being pursued and mined at the time. We can say Dogecoin has a liberal, pro-social philosophy behind all the technological “war-words” of ledgers, mining, and storage: Dogecoin promotes the idea that ‘sharing and tipping’ is more fun while ‘profit making’ is the main focus in the bigger-value coins.

Palmer’s Taunting Meme Turns into a Top Altcoin

Digital marketer, Jackson Palmer, is an Australian crypto-curious investor who spent a lot of time on coinmarketeer.com. Amazed by the competition and the seriousness with which everyone was trying to get onto the crypto currency bandwagon, he found the then famous Shiba Inu dog meme ‘Doge,’ a fun way to mock their seriousness.

Once, at the end of a bad day his simple tweet in mock-seriousness about “Dogecoin” as the next best crypto to happen to mankind quite literally caught the favorable attention of the cyber-currency world!

Many like-minded ‘netizens’ caught on to the joke with Palmer’s “Dogecoin” and urged him to take it seriously and give them an exciting and less-serious crypto-alternative.

As the story goes, even as Palmer reflected on these requests to create an altcoin by the same name, Bill Markus in faraway Colorado, United States, found that Palmer’s creation reflected his own mindset.

In a matter of days Markus had a strong IRTC developed, which was based on Bitcoin-safe use, and convinced Palmer to be the part of the bigger picture for a ‘classy’ value-denuded Dogecoin which existed for the mere purpose of expressing love and sharing among community members who love using cryptos over regular fiat currencies such as dollars and pounds.

Eventually, Markus cloned Dogecoin on the already established design template of Luckycoin, which was based on Litecoin, a Charlie Lee creation. The use of Scrypt in developing this crypto restricts the mining of it in large numbers using standard hardware.

Seriously, joking?

Fortunately for Palmer, Dogecoin became more prominent than the joke he had intended! The price of Dogecoin has reached an all-time high of $0.0173 per Doge during last January’s crypto bubble.

The coin which many crypto experts cut their teeth on is the fun, meme-ish currency that raised funds for big life-saving projects such as creating wells in the Kenyan river basin Tana with the “charity:water” project raising $11,000 (or 14,000,000) Dogecoins, in addition to more fun projects such as raising $30,000 for the 2014 Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team.

But it was the spectacular coming together of the community in March 2014 to sponsor Josh Wise, a NASCAR driver at world events, and eventually led to video games and an actual Dogecoin Car for the DLC. Fun, caring and sharing are Doge’s ethos, and the community is perpetuating it with every tip and share!