What happens when a joke gets taken seriously? In 2013, Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a way to poke fun at the crypto industry; now it‘s one of the world‘s biggest cryptocurrencies. How did it get to this point?
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that takes its name from the "doge" Internet meme. It started as a way to mock the crypto industry, but quickly built up a lively community of enthusiasts.
It has come a long way since 2013; during the 2021 crypto bull run, it briefly hit a market cap of $88 billion. Dogecoin celebrated its 10th anniversary on December 6th, 2023.
Who created it?
Jackson Palmer, an Adobe employee, couldn’t believe the huge number of altcoins that were popping up in 2013. As a joke, he sent out a tweet saying he was investing in Dogecoin—a fake coin based on a popular meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog.
Even though he tweeted in jest, several people thought he was on to something. They said the industry really needed a light-hearted token that could counter the more controversial coins on offer. So Palmer teamed up with Billy Markus, a programmer, to make Dogecoin a reality.
“It was always like a hobby project, like a side project thing,” Palmer told Decrypt in 2018. But a community quickly formed around the cryptocurrency, and took it much further than Palmer had anticipated.
A brief history of Dogecoin
- Dec 2013 – Dogecoin was founded by Jackson Palmer.
- March 2014 – The Dogecoin community raises $55,000 in DOGE to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise.
- June 2014 – The Dogecoin Foundation is established to preside over the currency‘s code.
- April 2015 – Co-founder Jackson Palmer leaves Dogecoin.
- January 2018 – Dogecoin briefly surpasses a $2 billion market cap.
- July 2020 – A viral TikTok challenge sends Dogecoin volumes soaring, pushing the price up by 96. The flurry of price action swiftly passes.
- January 2021 – Dogecoin surges to a market cap of over $9 billion in a price surge orchestrated by the SatoshiStreetBets subreddit.
- May 2021 – Dogecoin‘s price hits an all-time high of $0.73 in the run-up to Elon Musk‘s appearance on Saturday Night Live.
- May 2021 – Dogecoin developers reveal that Elon Musk has been advising them since 2019.
- June 2021 – Crypto exchange Coinbase lists Dogecoin.
- August 2021 – The Dogecoin Foundation relaunches after six years, with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin joining its board of advisers.
- November 2022: Elon Musk announces that he will upgrade Dogecoin with Vitalik Buterin, driving the price up; Buterin has yet to confirm this.
- May 2023: The DRC-20 standard is introduced, enabling the creation of "Doginals," similar to Bitcoin Ordinals, a unique digital asset akin to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
