In my previous article, I talked about Bitcoin and its pros and cons and how it can be a game-changer if it is allowed in South Asia. What if I tell you there’s another cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which came out of an internet meme and can also be a significant factor in the crypto world? Yes, you heard it right! First, we have to clear the cryptocurrency term to go further.
Well, Cryptocurrency started as an ordinary exchange medium, and the finance and economy experts thought it would go away or vanish. The simple definition is that it is a form of payment that can be exchanged online for products and services. General people often called it tokens.
Well, think of it as a casino chip. People will also need to exchange original currency for Cryptocurrency to get access to buy products or services.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, 6,700 various cryptocurrencies are traded publicly. I will mention a few of those at the end of this article. You will be surprised to know the total value of Cryptocurrency currently.
CoinMarketCap did research and found out that till April 13th, 2021, the total value of Cryptocurrency was more than 2.2 trillion US dollars! Let that sink in for a minute. $1.2 trillion out of $2.2 trillion is the value of Bitcoin.
The people who support Cryptocurrency love the technology behind this system which is blockchain. Because it is a decentralizing and recording system that can be more secure than the traditional system.
Now, people thought that it would fade away, but it didn’t. So, just like this, Dogecoin also didn’t fade away. You must be wondering what the hell is Dogecoin and why the name sounds funny, right? Let me get there now.
What is Dogecoin?
I am still wondering how the future generation will digest that an internet meme has become one of the most significant factors in the cryptocurrency world. Yes, I am talking about Dogecoin, which is the first generation of Cryptocurrency.
Its activities are pretty similar to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which can be transferred or exchanged safely worldwide. If I have to give a basic and formal definition, Dogecoin is a first-gen cryptocurrency that helps move value globally in a very secure manner.
It represents the Shiba Inu from the popular internet memes, which I will broadly explain in the “history of dogecoin” part. It has a similar purpose to Bitcoin and Litecoin, allowing the peer-to-peer exchange to occur in a censorship-resistant manner.
Due to its price hike Elon Mask’s tweets, and other things, Dogecoin has been a lot of coverage in the media. Now, let us dive into the origin or the history of Dogecoin.
History of Dogecoin
Dogecoin was introduced as a meme on Reddit or a ‘joke currency and right now it is a cryptocurrency asset worth billions of US dollars. Now before we jump into how this cryptocurrency started its journey, we have to talk about two people.
This image is collected from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Can you guess who this nerd is? You probably won’t be able to guess. He is Billy Markus, one of the co-founders of Dogecoin. He is from Portland, Oregon. Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of America. This is where he grew up. He was a software developer at IBM.
There is another guy named Jackson Palmer. He was a software engineer at a computer software company named Adobe.
You didn’t hear much of these two because they try to stay away from the public and lead a very private life. These two met with each other in 2013. IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer came with a solid 8 years ago.
They attached “Bitcoin” (During 2013, it was a hot topic in the business world) and “Doge” (An Internet meme) 2013 and it instantly became a phenomenon. Now before we jump further, I’ve to give a brief explanation about doge so that you can dive deeply into the later paragraph.
I am sure you have seen this dog everywhere on the internet. It is a female Shiba Inu whose name is ‘Kabosu’. She is the first one featured in the first meme. Kabosu started its journey by talking in Comic San font.
Internet referred to her as ‘doge’. The search for meme people on Reddit started spamming this dog’s picture. And then, doge finally became a cultural phenomenon. This meme became a symbol to make a joke about political or cultural issues, sports, or anything.
Now, let’s get to the main point. The two engineers started Dogecoin in 2013. It will be hard to believe but within one month, more than a million people visited dogecoin.com.
Jackson Palmer, who has been following the situation of cryptocurrency was hopeful about dogecoin. He tweeted before releasing the product, “Investing in Dogecoin, pretty sure it’s the next big thing.”
People gave him some suggestions on that tweet. Some of them encouraged him to work hard on this interesting idea. He bought the domain Dogecoin.com a week later of tweeting this.
During that time Reddit was spreading the doge meme all over the world and eventually, this came to their attention. They played a big part in developing dogecoin.
Increased drastically in 2013 and people on Reddit started spamming this dog’s picture. And then, doge finally became a cultural phenomenon. This meme became a symbol to make a joke about political or cultural issues, sports, or anything.
Now, let’s get to the main point. The two engineers started Dogecoin in 2013. It will be hard to believe but within one month, more than a million people visited dogecoin.com.
Jackson Palmer, who has been following the situation of cryptocurrency was hopeful about dogecoin. He tweeted before releasing the product, “Investing in Dogecoin, pretty sure it’s the next big thing.”
People gave him some suggestions on that tweet. Some of them encouraged him to work hard on this interesting idea. He bought the domain Dogecoin.com a week later of tweeting this. During that time Reddit was spreading the doge meme all over the world and eventually, this came to their attention. They played a big part in developing dogecoin.
Billy Markus had an interview with ‘Insider,’ and he said, “This is so funny. I should just make this coin”. Both of these geniuses weren’t sure about this, but they were too keen to work on this.
But before Elon Musk’s constant promotion of dogecoin, they owed to Redditors back in 2013. When Reddit people started making memes and exploding the internet with dogecoin-related posts, the market became $8 million at that time.
There was a nasty incident that happened at the end of 2013. A guy named Alex Green joined the Dogecoin community. He set up a cryptocurrency exchange in England. It was called ‘Moolah’ which handled both dogecoins and other cryptocurrencies.
A single dogecoin is worth a fraction of a penny, but this guy gave tips of thousands of dollars. Alex started selling shares in ‘Moolah,’ and he also threatened to sue the original Dogecoin founders for harassment because they questioned his use of this coin.
Moolah was shut down in 2014, and Alex Green runaway with the money. Later the investigators found out that he was a serial scammer named Ryan Kennedy. He had a long history of creating scam start-ups that raised money and disappeared. Later, investigators found out that Ryan was also a harasser. He was finally put in jail for 11 years in 2016.
The Dogecoin community lost its value because of this scandal, but in the end, it recovered. During that time, the two founders were driven away and continued playing with their coin.
They were hiding from the limelight. The work activities stopped, and the software was barely even maintained by them. In the world of cryptocurrency, dogecoin became another altcoin. Altcoin means all the other cryptocurrencies than bitcoin, which means not as crucial as Bitcoin. It was a low-volume, near-worthless token that gamblers could swap for other cryptocurrencies. But it did turn up recently.
How does Dogecoin work?
Most South Asian people are still unaware of how Dogecoin works, and they need to know the primary processing of Dogecoin or any cryptocurrency. But it isn’t too difficult to figure out that Dogecoin’s coding is similar to Bitcoin.
One of the co-founders, Billy Markus, mentioned that it took him only three hours to create Dogecoin. He didn’t feel hesitant to mention that he used the control F function to scroll through the codes of Bitcoin and replace all instances of Bitcoin with Dogecoin. Now let’s talk about some terms and how they work.
Consensus resistance
This cryptocurrency uses some sort of proof-of-work consensus algorithm to make sure the network is secured. However, this PoW system is different than the SHA-256 version used by Bitcoin. Instead, the network relies on a scripting technology in its PoW mechanism. The complete form of PoW is Proof of work which is a form of cryptographic zero-knowledge proof. This clarifies one party’s evidence to others that a certain amount of specific computational effort has been expended. It is a cryptocurrency blockchain. If you want to mine Dogecoin, you will have to use dedicated ASIC and FPGA devices.
Total Coins
The hard cap is a term used by crypto holders, which means the limitation placed by the blockchain’s code on the absolute maximum supply of any specific cryptocurrency.
It doesn’t allow any further circulation of its units. Dogecoin doesn’t have any hard cap. When the project was established, it had 100 billion coins in circulation. In 2015, many crypto holders mined all of these coins due to the one-minute block times.
Dogecoin developers decided to issue another 5 billion after 2015. It currently has 5 billion coins scheduled for issuance every year.
Mining
There are diggers or miners in the cryptocurrency market, and the Dogecoin ecosystem is no exception. Dogecoin’s blockchain is referred to as Dogechain, which is publicly online and shows all the transactions in almost real-time. Crypto holders also referred to this process as a lottery because only one node at a time can win a reward.
After that, the computer can confirm a new block fastest. When mining dogecoin is 10,000 dogecoin, that is the time the block rewards. Mining Dogecoin is more accessible than mining Bitcoin.
Dogecoin developers never did a pre-mine. Pre-mines are pretty popular in the crypto market because they allow developers to build up reserves before the network goes public.
The primary step of buying Dogecoin
Before jumping onto it, let me be clear about Binance and Kraken. Both of these are exchanges that are trusted as safe for crypto holders. Both of these exchanges have some similar attributes, yet Binance is friendlier to beginners. On the other hand, if crypto holders want to attach their bank accounts to their cryptocurrency exchange of choice, then Kraken will be more suitable than Binance.
Both Binance and Kraken support Dogecoin. One of the most significant advantages is these exchanges are fiat on-ramps. Cryptocurrency holders can directly buy dogecoins by using their debit or credit card.
Storing Dogecoin
Currently, people can store dogecoins in several ways. One of the best ways is in the Jaxx wallet. Jaxx wallet is a multi-currency wallet that supports more than eighty cryptocurrencies, including the most popular ones like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and many more.
This wallet is currently available on Android and Apple devices for free. Crypto holders can store Dogecoin there. By using this app, they can also have a great selection of other coins. Another advantage of the Jaxx wallet is, that crypto holders can even exchange their coins directly from the wallet.
There is another option for a crypto holder who wants to make a significant investment in Dogecoin and plans to hold onto it for the long term. That option is a hardware wallet that will keep their crypto stored offline in cold storage. This is secure, and it makes it impossible for online frauds to access your holdings. The Ledger Nano 5 also supports Dogecoin.
Dogecoin Wallets
I have written about dogecoin mining above, and you understand what that means. Now let’s get to the Dogecoin wallets, shall we?
I have written in my previous article on Bitcoin where I stated that these crypto wallets aren’t like genuine wallets where people can keep real money or even metal coins.
Cryptocurrencies are digital, and these coins only remain or exist on computers. This is where crypto wallets come in. These wallets store the information crypto holders need to use their cryptocurrency. There is information on public keys and private keys, which are all included in these wallets.
There are four types of dogecoin wallets crypto holders can choose from.
1. Online wallets: These are the specific wallets (e.g., Dogechain) that allow crypto holders to use the Dogecoin blockchain without storing them on their PC.
2. Software wallets: This wallet offers two types of wallets for downloading information. The first one is Dogecoin Core which can contain and protect the whole Dogecoin blockchain. It is time-consuming because it takes a lot of time to download. There is another software wallet which is MultiDoge. It is less complicated than Dogecoin Core. It also stores enough information to use Dogecoin but is faster than the Dogecoin Core.
3. Paper wallets: There are printable wallets that are different than the first two. This is a secure way to store crypto holders’ dogecoins. They can make a paper wallet at sites like the Net.
4. Hardware wallets: Like USB sticks, several printable wallets are pretty expensive. A keep key is around $65 and a Ledger Nano is $96. These are the best ways to secure the storage of your Dogecoin.
Beneficial factors of Dogecoin
Let me try to keep this part as simple as possible. There are some beneficial factors of Dogecoin. This coin can complete the transaction process as quickly as Bitcoin. Crypto holders can send or receive from any part of the world, which means the transaction is possible internationally.
Over the years, the USA and some European countries have started accepting this unique coin; the network of this coin has increased. I won’t be surprised if it is accepted in Bangladesh and other South Asian nations in the future.
Nothing comes without risk
No investment comes without risk. Dogecoin has had several security problems since the beginning of its journey. Some hackers hacked the Dogecoin wallet on 25 December 2014. They stole 21 million Dogecoin, which was worth around $12,000.
It is said that blockchain tech is safer than most other transaction methods, yet there is a risk of 51% attacks. A 51% attack means more than half of a blockchain comes under the control of one group of hackers or an individual. If this happens, the group can add invalid transactions to the blockchain, a fraud.
The developers of Dogecoin have been working on it since the start of its journey. They built a merged mining operation with Litecoin in 2014. The two currencies can now be mixed, which makes it safer than it was.
Why Elon Musk is so invested in Dogecoin?
I have to clarify here that the Dogecoin community is a wholesome group of people who do not take things seriously. According to Spencer Bogart, Elon Musk is a fan of cryptocurrency because he likes memes and jokes, and he’s a fun guy. This is why he has been tweeting about cryptocurrencies and Dogecoin, which has increased its price massively.
He mentioned in a video he uploaded on Twitter that Dogecoin could be the future of the earth, and people have to be wise while investing in it.
Current situation and what’s the future of this coin?
In this year’s March, the value of Dogecoin increased to nearly 70 cents which made it the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency and brought the longtime goal of $1. But the price has been going up and down lately.
This is the latest update of the price of Dogecoin which has been taken from https://goldprice.org/cryptocurrency-price/dogecoin-price
The developers of Dogecoin haven’t made any significant changes to the coin since 2015. This means it can become irrelevant in the future. This coin has only three developers, and they are all part-time volunteers.
The community of this coin is a wholesome group of people who do not take things seriously, and this is a weakness of Dogecoin. We can’t precisely speculate if it really will take over the crypto market in the future or not, but it will remain a hot topic for a long time.
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