Dogecoin — about the history of the cryptocurrency meme

[zakiyatasnim]

In 2013, Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer created their own cryptocurrency based on a popular Shiba Inu meme. Unexpectedly for them, Dogecoin became a popular asset and grew in value, and a fairly influential community gathered around it.



Dogecoin is a serious cryptocurrency that emerged from a meme. With its help, the creators wanted to make fun of the market, but unexpectedly created a valuable asset. This year, Dogecoin has risen in price dozens of times. There are already 11.7 billion units of this cryptocurrency in circulation. Tesla founder Elon Musk posted pictures of a Shiba Inu dog on Twitter, and YouTube blogger Marques Brownlee described Dogecoin as “the most accessible and least scary cryptocurrency for people.”

Billy Marcus, an IBM developer and one of the creators of Dogecoin, says: “There are many reasons why people buy it, and at this point it has become mainstream in a sense. It is one of the most volatile assets to invest in, but people have many reasons for it, and it is reflected in the market.”


Most alternative cryptocurrencies, also known as altcoins or clones, are kenya number data broadly similar to Bitcoin. They can be extracted or "mined" on computers that perform complex calculations to create new assets. In 2013, Marcus tried using his gaming computer to mine Bitcoin while not playing, but found it to be "a very slow and expensive process."

Using a guide he found online, he learned how to create his own altcoin. The first was Bells, based on the currency from Nintendo's popular simulation game Animal Crossing. According to him, this altcoin was a failure. After spending some time in an online chat, he contacted Adobe developer Jackson Palmer, who purchased the domain name Dogecoin.com.

“I discovered that there was a huge market with new coins appearing every day, sometimes every hour. And each one was going to cost a lot of money and take over the galaxy,” Marcus recalls. “I thought that was crazy. And given the number of them, I figured it would be easy to make my own cryptocurrency.”

Doge is an image of a Shiba Inu dog, one of the first internet memes to become popular with the general public. In 2013, the meme template of phrases combined with a funny dog ​​gained worldwide popularity, making it the perfect theme for cryptocurrency.

As a result, Marcus and Palmer created Dogecoin, a currency so integrated into meme culture that it was impossible to take it seriously. The font chosen for the site was Comic Sans, which often accompanies the Doge meme.

“It was originally conceived as a parody of all the ‘serious’ clone coins that tried so hard to stand out that they seemed the same,” says Marcus.