#  # **Dogecoin history** [Dogecoin.com](http://Dogecoin.com) promotes the currency as the "fun and friendly Internet currency", referencing its origins as a "joke". Software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched the satirical cryptocurrency as a way to make fun of Bitcoin and the many other cryptocurrencies boasting grand plans to take over the world. With the help of Reddit, the site became an instant hit. Within two weeks, Dogecoin had established a dedicated blog and forum, and its market value reached $8 million, once jumping to become the seventh largest electronic currency in the world. ## History Originally formed as a "joke", Dogecoin was created by IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer. They wanted to create a peer-to-peer digital currency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. In addition, they wanted to distance it from the controversial history of other coins. Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6, 2013, and within the first 30 days, there were over a million visitors to [Dogecoin.com](http://Dogecoin.com). Palmer is credited with making the idea a reality. At the time, he was a member of the Adobe marketing department in Sydney, Australia. Palmer had purchased the domain [Dogecoin.com](http://Dogecoin.com) and added a splash screen, which featured the coin's logo and scattered Comic Sans text. Markus reached out to Palmer after seeing the site, and started efforts to develop the currency. Markus designed Dogecoin's protocol based on existing cryptocurrencies Luckycoin and Litecoin, which use scrypt technology in their proof-of-work algorithm. The use of scrypt means that miners cannot use SHA-256 bitcoin mining equipment, and instead must use dedicated field-programmable gate array and application-specific integrated circuit devices for mining which are known to be more complex to produce. On December 19, 2013, Dogecoin jumped nearly 300% in value in 72 hours, rising from $0.00026 to $0.00095, with a volume of billions of Dogecoins traded per day. This growth occurred during a time when Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies were reeling from China's decision to forbid Chinese banks from investing in the Bitcoin economy. Three days later, Dogecoin experienced its first major crash when its price dropped by 80% due to this event and to large mining pools exploiting the small amount of computing power required at the time to mine Dogecoin. On December 25, 2013, the first major theft of Dogecoin occurred when millions of coins were stolen during a hack on the online cryptocurrency wallet platform Dogewallet. The hacker gained access to the platform's filesystem and modified its send/receive page to send any and all coins to a static internet protocol address. This hacking incident spiked tweets about Dogecoin, making it the most mentioned altcoin on Twitter at the time, although it was in reference to a negative event. To help those who lost funds on Dogewallet after its breach, the Dogecoin community started an initiative named "SaveDogemas" to help donate coins to those who had them stolen. Approximately one month later, enough money was donated to cover all of the coins that were stolen. In January 2014, the trading volume of Dogecoin briefly surpassed that of all other cryptocurrencies combined. However, its market capitalization remained substantially behind that of Bitcoin. Initially, Dogecoin featured a randomized reward that is received for each mining block. However, in March 2014, this behaviour was updated to a static block reward. Co-founder Jackson Palmer left the cryptocurrency community in 2015 and has no plans to return, having come to the belief that cryptocurrency, originally conceived as a libertarian alternative to money, is fundamentally exploitative and built to enrich its top proponents. His co-founder, Billy Markus, agreed that Palmer's position was generally valid. During the 2017 to early 2018 cryptocurrency bubble, Dogecoin briefly reached a peak of $0.017 on January 7, 2018, putting its total market capitalization near $2 billion. In July 2020, the price of Dogecoin spiked following a TikTok trend aimed at getting Dogecoin to $1. On May 9, 2021, SpaceX announced a rideshare mission to the Moon completely funded by Dogecoin, thus becoming the first space mission funded by a cryptocurrency. Elon Musk confirmed this news via Twitter. DOGE-1, a CubeSat, was planned to be a minor 40 kg rideshare payload on Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission in Q1 2022, but ultimately was delayed to a potential later mission. On August 14, 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation announced the "re-establishment of the Dogecoin Foundation (est 2014), with a renewed focus on supporting the Dogecoin Ecosystem, Community and promoting the future of the Dogecoin Blockchain." The Foundation was reinvigorated by the addition to its Board of notable advisors such as Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum co-founder and inventor) and Jared Birchall (representing Elon Musk). 2021 boom and subsequent fall In January 2021, Dogecoin went up over 800% in 24 hours, reaching $0.07, as a result of attention from Reddit users, partially encouraged by Elon Musk and the GameStop short squeeze. In February 2021, Dogecoin hit a new high price of $0.08 following Twitter encouragement from Musk, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons. In March 2021, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced his NBA team would allow purchasing tickets and products with Dogecoin; within two days, Cuban had declared his franchise had become the top Dogecoin merchant, having carried out 20,000 transactions. In April 2021, Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies surged, stimulated in part by the direct listing for cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on April 14, although that platform did not provide trading of Dogecoin. Dogecoin first reached $0.10 on April 14, before hitting a new high of $0.45 on April 16 (up 400% that week), with a volume of nearly $70 billion traded in the preceding 24 hours. At the time, Dogecoin's market capitalization approached $50 billion, making it the fifth-highest-valued cryptocurrency; its value had increased more than 7,000% year-to-date. Interest in Dogecoin contributed to an outage in electronic trading platform Robinhood's cryptocurrency system on April 15, caused by "unprecedented demand", and prompted concerns from experts of a nearing speculative bubble in the cryptocurrency market. On May 4, 2021, the value of Dogecoin first surpassed the symbolic hurdle of $0.50. In April 2023, a Dogecoin increase was attributed to Elon Musk temporarily changing the logo on the Twitter app to a Doge logo. In June 2023, Musk was accused of insider trading by investors based on a series of stunts including the change of logo. On August 29, 2024, Elon Musk and his electric vehicle company Tesla won the dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors by hyping the cryptocurrency dogecoin and conducting insider trading, causing billions of dollars of losses. Use and exchanges Dogecoin is an altcoin with a large userbase, and is traded against both fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies on several reputable cryptocurrency exchanges and retail investment platforms. Trading physical, tangible items in exchange for Dogecoin takes place on online communities such as Reddit and Twitter, where users in such circles frequently share cryptocurrency-related information. Several cases of people using their employers' or universities' computers to mine Dogecoin have been discovered. Dogecoin has been used in an attempted property sale, and it has been used in the pornography and gambling industries. ## Online tipping One major mainstream commercial application of the cryptocurrency has been Internet-based tipping systems, in which social media users tip other users for providing interesting or noteworthy content. ## Dogetipbot Dogetipbot was a cryptocurrency transaction service used on popular sites like Reddit and Twitch. It allowed users to send Dogecoins to other users through commands via Reddit comments. In May 2017, Dogetipbot was discontinued and taken offline after its creator declared bankruptcy; this left many Dogetipbot users losing their coins stored in the Dogetipbot system. ## Smart contracts Dogecoin's blockchain cannot interact with smart contracts directly. Dogecoin can be tied to the Ethereum blockchain in order to access some decentralized finance (DeFi) instruments. ## Currency supply Dogecoin started with a supply limit of Ð100 billion, which would have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were then allowing. By mid-2015, the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined, with an additional Ð5 billion put into circulation every year thereafter. In February 2014, Palmer announced that the limit would be removed in an effort to create a consistent reduction of its inflation rate over time. ## Mining parameters Dogecoin's implementation differs from its predecessors: It was originally forked from Litecoin, then refactored to Bitcoin. Dogecoin's target block time is 1 minute, as opposed to Litecoin's 2.5 minutes and Bitcoin's 10 minutes. ## Fundraising 2014 Winter Olympics The Dogecoin community and foundation have encouraged fundraising for charities and other notable causes. On January 19, 2014, a fundraiser was established by the Dogecoin community to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled Team, which had qualified for, but could not afford to go to, the Sochi Winter Olympics. By the second day, $36,000 worth of Dogecoin was donated and the Dogecoin to Bitcoin exchange rate rose by 50%. The Dogecoin community also raised funds for a second Sochi athlete, Shiva Keshavan. ## Doge4Water In 2014, The Dogecoin Foundation, led by Eric Nakagawa, began collecting donations to build a well in the Tana river basin in Kenya for World Water Day (March 22). The campaign, in cooperation with Charity: Water, collected donations from more than 4,000 donors, including one anonymous benefactor who donated 14,000,000 dogecoin (worth approximately $11,000 at the time), raising over US$30,000.