Dogecoin is an open-source, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and an altcoin (any other cryptocurrency that is not bitcoin) created by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus in 2013. It was first started as a form of joke based on a popular internet meme to make jest of other cryptocurrencies’ growth, with its official logo being a Shiba Inu dog.
Although Dogecoin started as a joke based on a popular meme, it has its online community with loyal followers and users who trade it and use it as a tipping currency for social media content and has a market capitalization of about $9 billion as of Feburary 12 2021.
Dogecoin is used on online platforms like Twitter and Reddit as a form of payment in trading physical items. It has also been used in the poker and porn industries. Users can buy and sell Dogecoin on exchanges or can store it in a dogecoin wallet.
Short History of Dogecoin
Jackson Palmer, a product manager at Adobe Inc in Sydney, created Dogecoin in 2013 to mock the hype about other cryptocurrencies. Due to the positive feedback he got on the cryptocurrency, he bought the dogecoin.com domain. While Billy Markus, a software developer at IBM in Portland, Oregon, was trying to create a cryptocurrency but was experiencing some difficulties.
When Markus heard about the Dogecoin, he contacted Jackson and asked for permission to build software for the Dogecoin. He built the dogecoins code based on Luckycoin, which was based on Litecoin.
Markus and Palmer launched Dogecoin on December 6 2013. The value for the coin rose by 300% about two weeks later.
Dogecoin is an inflationary coin due to its lack of a supply limit.
Mining of Dogecoin
Dogecoin is mined the same way Litecoin is mined using a proof of work as its mechanism of consensus, but it has a block time of 1 minute compared to the 2.5 minutes block time of Litecoin and 10 minutes block time of Bitcoin which makes it faster than other blockchains.
-The block reward for mining a dogecoin is 10,000 dogecoins.
-It also has no supply limit and over 113 billion coins have been mined which make it vulnerable to inflation.
-Dogecoin can be mined with any computer as it doesn’t require a lot of computing power.
Dogecoin Community
The dogecoin community’s loyal followers have been involved in different donations, and fundraising activities, such as donating about $30,000 worth of Dogecoin to a Jamaican bobsled team to enable them performs in the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in 2014.
They also raised funds to sponsor John Wise, a NASCAR driver, on March 25, 2014. These are just a few of the donations and fundraising the community has done for sports.
How To Buy Dogecoins
There are several places to buy Dogecoins from but we recommend using crypto exchanges since they are safe and reliable. The crypto exchange recommended is Binance since you can easily buy dogecoins using your local currencies. To sign up on Binance click here and begin your journey.
