Overview
Dogecoin was created as a joke by its developers in response to internet culture, but has since become one of the most popular meme coins, with celebrities like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban championing it.
The following is taken straight from the Dogecoin Manifesto: “Dogecoin is the accidental cryptocurrency that makes people smile.” (You can sign the manifesto here.)
Since the beginning, Dogecoin, also referred to as Doge, has enjoyed a certain mystique and a vibrant community of fans and endorsers. Still, it also raised questions and confused market outsiders.
People love to love Doge, but why? One of the reasons is that, like cryptocurrencies are financial tools native to the internet, Dogecoin, in many ways, represents the ironic aspects of internet culture.
After all, Doge was a meme asset before meme trading and investing became a thing in traditional equity markets
Dogecoin was cool before crypto was cool
Dogecoin was created in the early days of crypto back in 2013 by Jackson Palmer and Bill Markus. The pair met on the internet and developed Doge to comment on some of the absurdities of early crypto culture.
On the backend, Doge is based on the Litecoin blockchain and uses the Scrypt algorithm for proof-of-work consensus. The current block reward is 10,000 Doge, and a new block is created every minute.
On the front end, Doge is represented by a Shiba Inu dog. The Shiba Inu dog was a popular meme in the early 2010s — the original image features an expressive dog with garbled phrases overlayed.
While Doge was initially created to underscore the craziness of crypto culture, the fact that it has only grown (and in some senses multiplied) over the last nine years is fascinating and confounding to others.
As crypto goes more of the way of button-downs and boardrooms as it hits the mainstream, there will always be Doge — the coin that reminds us of the power of “much wow.”
Memes beyond memes
Generally, the interest in Dogecoin coincides with overall market hype. The interest in Doge and its associated meme when the crypto markets are surging. But during crypto winters, Doge-related activity goes into deep hibernation.
During the last market uptick of 2021, the interest in Doge became so strong that it inspired the creation and adoption of a handful of other digital assets, including Shiba Inu, Dogelon Mars, and Baby Doge, among others.
In terms of real-world utility, Doge can be used to buy merch from Tesla (and soon SpaceX, according to a tweet from Elon Musk).
Other billionaires have also signaled their support for Doge, such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who in 2021 announced that people could buy Mavericks gear at the official store using the dog coin.
Just like the overall crypto market cycle, Cuban notes a noticeable Doge usage pattern. This summer, he was quoted in the media as saying, “When people were buying and trading Dogecoin a lot, we were making thousands of dollars a week, ten thousand a week, here and there. So it was real money for us,” said Cuban. “But at the same time, once people stopped speculating on it, people lost kind of the vibe for it.”
Buying Doge with Coinme
Whether you want to participate in one of crypto’s oldest memes or buy merch from the ever-expanding list of Doge supporters, Coinme has you covered.
You can convert cash to Doge using a Coinme-enabled kiosk or a debit card to buy Doge using the Coinme app.
You can also keep tabs on the latest Dogecoin market movements by visiting Coinme’s Dogecoin price page.
