Dogecoin

A somewhat funny cryptocurrency came to the world on December 8, 2013 (less than two weeks after bitcoin reached a remarkable maximum of USD 1,242) in the form of dogecoin. Dogecoin was inspired by Doge the dog, which Wired magazine had named as the meme of the year in 2013. Doge was a Shiba Inu dog whose image with texts from an internal monologue went viral.

Initially, Dogecoin was launched as a joke. Jackson Palmer, who worked in the marketing department of the Adobe offices in Sydney and was a cryptocurrency enthusiast, tweeted: "Investing in Dogecoin, I'm pretty sure it's the next big thing." After a positive reception to what was supposed to be a joke, he bought the domain, Dogecoin.com. Palmer's decision caught the attention of Billy Markus, a programmer originally from Portland, Oregon, who wanted to launch a new crypto-active. In his own words: "The first thing I said was, 'This is so funny.' Then I said, 'I should make this coin.'"

Markus used the Litecoin code to derive Dogecoin, which is two degrees apart from Bitcoin. If Litecoin is the son of Bitcoin, then Dogecoin is his grandson. A relevant variation of Dogecoin is that it has a much higher money supply than Bitcoin and even Litecoin: according to its code, there would be 100 billion Dogecoins in circulation after 1.5 years (compared to a cap of 21 million units in the case of Bitcoin and 84 million in the case of Litecoin).

Ultimately, the Markus team decided to issue around 5,000 million coins per year, a rate of issuance very different from that of deflationary cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and litecoin. Dogecoin attracted some degree of adoption from Internet users who found it useful for paying tips through the Internet. Dogecoin's money supply has kept the price of the unit below a penny, which is adequate for its purpose.

While Dogecoin may have been released as a joke, its association with a popular Internet meme, its joyous origins, and its focus on smart marketing campaigns meant that the cryptocurrency enjoyed a period of surprising growth. Only seven weeks after its launch, its network value grew to USD 70 million. Today it is worth more than USD 300 million per market capitalization.