Dogecoin (DOGE), the original memecoin, has turned nine years old today. It is an open-source cryptocurrency and is the brainchild of software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus.
With the memecoin turning nine, let’s take a journey through its history and relevant milestones.
History of Dogecoin
To mock the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies, Jackson Palmer, a product manager at Adobe Inc.’s Sydney, Australia, office, developed Dogecoin in 2013. He purchased the domain dogecoin.com after discovering interest and favorable comments on social media.
Billy Markus, an IBM software developer, wanted to design a cryptocurrency but could not find people to support him. Markus collaborated with Palmer to create the software that powered DOGE.
Markus built Dogecoin’s (DOGE) code on Luckycoin, a fork of Litecoin, and at first, employed a randomized reward for block mining. However, in March 2014, that reward was modified to a static one. DOGE is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrency that uses Litecoin’s script technology.
On December 6, 2013, Palmer and Markus released DOGE. DOGE’s value increased by 300% two weeks later, on December 19.
Milestones reached
Upon launch, DOGE rapidly took off on Reddit, creating an $8 million market value. It gained popularity for the online custom of “tipping,” which involved rewarding users for completing “good deeds” like providing information or facilitating accessibility on a platform.
In 2021, Elon Musk publicly endorsed Dogecoin, saying that he was collaborating with the coin’s developers to increase transaction speed. Furthermore, the founder of SpaceX conducted a social media survey to determine whether Tesla should accept Dogecoin as payment. Musk has been one of the biggest DOGE proponents. His support is responsible for a large amount of DOGE’s success.
Moreover, the movie theater chain AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC) announced in October 2021 that it would accept Dogecoin for digital gift cards, giving the meme-based cryptocurrency even more use.
With a market capitalization of $8.4 billion, Dogecoin had the 11th-highest market cap rating as of August 2022.
Fast forward to 2022, the crypto project has reached new heights. Musk recently announced a revamping of Twitter with a payment option. Many anticipate DOGE to be a part of the payment feature. Musk has previously teased the possibility of such a feature with DOGE. Moreover, the project’s market cap has grown to a whopping $13.7 billion since. Dogecoin is currently the fifth largest crypto by market cap, without counting stablecoins.
At press time, DOGE was trading at $0.100492, down by 5.8% in the last 24 hours.