What is Dogecoin? How a Joke Become Popular Cryptocurrency
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| photo copyright: Binance Academy |
If you regularly visit social media such as Twitter, Reddit, etc., outside of Facebook, you may have heard the name Dogecoin many times in the last few days. You may also have seen many powerful social media influencers posting about Dogecoin.
Even if Dogecoin isn't familiar to you, Dogecoin's logo is definitely familiar to you. You've seen the Japanese Shiba Inu breed dog on the Dogecoin logo thousands of times on Facebook so far in various memes. But what is Dogecoin and why is this dog's picture on the Dogecoin logo? And why is there so much hype about it? Let's find out!
What is Dogecoin?
You've certainly heard the name of the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and you may have a pretty good idea about Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, however, is not the only cryptocurrency. In addition to Bitcoin, there are many other cryptocurrencies called Alternative Coin or AltCoin.
The number of altcoins is not small. So far, the number of such AltCoins is more than a few thousand. We don't usually hear the names of other cryptocurrencies, since the real-world value of the others is not $50,000 like Bitcoin, and they're not as popular as Bitcoin.
However, you may have heard the names of some such alternative coins, which have gained some popularity. For example, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dash. If you want an alternative cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, you can launch yours. Because creating a new AltCoin is not a very difficult task to launch.
Being a decentralized currency, anyone can launch such coins if they want to. For example, Facebook also has plans to launch its own cryptocurrency, Libra. And yes, you got it right. Dogecoin is another such decentralized currency or AltCoin.
According to a Coinmarketcap report, Dogecoin is currently one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies as a market value. However, the market value of dogecoin is very low. At present, the market value of 1 dogecoin in the US dollar is around 5 cents.
Currently, the reason for so much hype about Dogecoin is that many popular internet personalities, especially Elon Musk, are often promoting Dogecoin. Because, many others, including Elon Musk, are speculating that Dogecoin is going to be the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.
However, this is not the first time that Dogecoin, this strange currency, has come into the spotlight. Dogecoin has also received much more attention than other cryptocurrencies even at the very beginning of its release. The history behind the start of dogecoin is also different from other cryptocurrencies. Let's also know something about the history of Dogecoin!
History of Dogecoin
You will be surprised to know that the Creator of Dogecoin himself never thought that there would be a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin. The name Dogecoin came only as a joke. The joke was started by Jackson Palmer, a software engineer from Adobe.
In 2013, bitcoin's popularity increased as well as altcoin was being created one after the other. So many types of AltCoin were being created that he tweeted as a joke about the making of AltCoin, in which he asked to imagine another AltCoin in the name of the then popular meme, Doge Dog, and added a picture of a coin with a funny tweet, which had the face of the Shiba Inu dog.
In 2013, Jackson's funny tweet created so much hype that he started thinking of launching the dogecoin he had imagined as another real cryptocurrency. On the other hand, IBM engineer Billy Marcus in Portland was also thinking about doing a digital currency program of his own.
So a few days later, IBM engineer Billy Marcus and Adobe engineer Jackson Palmer combined to create a new cryptocurrency by blending together the two hype of the time, i.e. doge dog meme and cryptocurrency, which must be called "DogeCoin"!
They also purchased the domain of the name dogecoin.com, which received more than 1 million visitors in the first month after the purchase. The founders of DogeCoin were also surprised to see so many internet users interested in DogeCoin since they themselves had never experienced so much hype.
Shortly after the DogeCoin currency was released publicly, the coin created the most hype about the coin among Reddit users. In 2013 alone, DogeCoin's total market value was about $8 million due to Redditors.
Within a week of its launch, Dogecoin became a popular medium to give small tips on the internet. At that time, if someone liked someone's post on Reddit, it was a very common practice to send him some DogeCoin tips. Of course, since DogeCoin is a meme-focused cryptocurrency, it is more advisable to use DogeCoin instead of using other coins to give tips to someone.
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