New cryptocurrencies are usually created to improve the Bitcoin technology, upgrade the blockchain or simply raise money for a project. It also just happens that cryptocurrency is launched for fun, ironically reaching a market cap of $500M.
Our review is about Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on the meme. This one is gonna be about its history, specs and whether it has a promising future on the market.
Dogecoin History
The Dogecoin cryptocurrency was developed and launched in December 2013 by a programmer Billy Marcus. He based his cryptocurrency on a Litecoin fork called Luckycoin. But his main advantage was the name for the new cryptocurrency. At that time, a popular meme about the Shiba Inu dog breed was roaming the Internet. That’s where Billy Marcus's inspiration took off.
The unusual cryptocurrency quickly began gaining popularity. A web designer Jackson Palmer was keen on helping the currency get more attention. He decided to launch the Dogecoin account on Twitter, as well as a website for the newly made crypto. Eventually, Marcus and Palmer met and began working on the Dogecoin project jointly.
A large community was quickly formed around the cryptocurrency. You can say it is the friendliest one among any other crypto projects. Dogecoin became a token of gratitude and charity. It is possible to donate Dogecoin to a favorite blogger or raise funds for a charity project. There have even been instances when Dogecoin users raised and donated $50k worth of Doge.
About three years ago, however, Jackson Palmer stated that he sold all his Dogecoin and is no longer engaged in this project. Nevertheless, the community continues to consider Palmer one of the founders of Doge and is constantly interested in his opinion about the cryptocurrency. It seems to anger Palmer because he has repeatedly asked to leave him alone. Funny that he says it because his appearances in the media are conveniently placed when it is necessary to draw attention to Dogecoin. Could it be a marketing ruse?
Tech & Mining
Dogecoin would have unlikely received such popularity if it had not been so convenient to use. To achieve this utility, the code is written to limit the block creation time to 1 minute. For comparison, in Litecoin, it is two and a half minutes, while in Bitcoin it takes as much as ten minutes. The maximum emission cap was set to 100B tokens so that anyone would use it.
Dogecoin mining is based on a Proof of Work algorithm and was initially available on almost any device. Initially, the mining reward was determined randomly and could range from 0 to several thousand coins. But in March 2014, they decided to abandon this practice and set a fixed fee for miners to motivate them in supporting the network. And it worked well, because today, mining Dog requires at least a small mining farm.
Eventually, it was decided to drop the emission cap so that the coins could be mined endlessly.
A Meme of $2B in Cost
The peak of Dogecoin fame came in January 2018, when the altcoins were at the peak of the bull market while it was also a new year of the Dog. As a result, Doge rose to almost 2 cents while its market cap exceeded $2B.
Naturally, the coin value went down along with the entire market. But at the end of August, Dogecoin came back with an unexpected surprise: in just a week, it climbed up in the market cap rating from top-50 to top-20 cryptocurrencies. It happened because of the Dogethereum hardfork announcement. The update featured atomic swaps between the Dogecoin and Ethereum blockchains. Although the hardfork was scheduled for September, only a test run was completed and much remains to be seen for the update.
Interestingly, cryptocurrencies are bound to fall in price after the boom because the important event for the market has worked itself out and it would be the time to sell everything. However, Dogecoin retained the spot in the top-20 list and it took some time before the cryptocurrency moved 5 spots lower.
Conclusions
Dogecoin is a unique cryptocurrency that doesn’t need new blockchain technologies or corporation adoption for its successful development. You can call it a coin that belongs to the people. They simply like to own Dogecoin and use it for good deeds. Such a business model will never lose its relevance.
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