What you need to know 🐳 Dogecoin is the first memecoin to achieve global fame.
It has the backing of well-known figures such as Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk.
Overview 🧬 Dogecoin is a blockchain launched in December 2013.
It shares many similarities with Bitcoin as Dogecoin is a derivation (fork) of Lucky Coin, which is itself a fork of Litecoin, which is in turn a fork of Bitcoin.
As a result, Bitcoin and Dogecoin have many things in common: both are proof-of-work based and do not support smart contracts.
However, the Doge blockchain produces a block every minute, compared with Bitcoin's 10 minutes. This enables faster transactions at a lower cost. Doge is therefore better suited to payments.
A shorter interval between each block also means that the number of Doge created increases faster, as does the size of the blockchain, although it is still four times smaller than Bitcoin.
Doge uses the Scrypt hash function, just like Litecoin, while Bitcoin relies on SHA256. As a result, ASICs dedicated to mining Bitcoin are not suitable for mining Doge.
In addition, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network is around 607,000,000 TH/s, while that of Dogecoin is around 1170 TH/s. Dogecoin is therefore much less energy-intensive.
Finally, the total quantity of Doge has no limit and has not halved since 2015. It is therefore a token intended to be used and spent rather than held indefinitely.
Financing 💰 The Dogecoin project has never raised any funds.
Team 👾 Dogecoin was created in a matter of days by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer to denounce the many projects attempting to create a new Bitcoin. By giving Dogecoin a humorous image, they wanted to show the ease of launching a cryptocurrency and the lack of value of the many "new Bitcoins" at the time.
However, the two founders withdrew from the project in 2015.
Jackson Palmer said the crypto community seemed only interested in money without making any useful contribution.
Doge's development became somewhat uncertain after that, but that didn't stop the blockchain from working.
The project had a renaissance in 2020 when Elon Musk started tweeting about it. His humorous and cryptic tweets about cryptocurrency captivated his millions of followers. For example, he tweeted phrases like "Dogecoin is the people's crypto" and "No highs, no lows, only Doge".
Every time Musk mentioned Dogecoin, its price rose dramatically. His influence on the cryptocurrency market became evident, and investors began to keep a close eye on his tweets.
In 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation was restructured to provide more clarity. Jared Birchall has joined the Dogecoin Foundation board as legal and financial advisor, representing Elon Musk among others. He has also been CEO of Neuralink (founded by Elon Musk) since 2016.
Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, also serves as an advisor.
Max Keller, a long-time developer of the project, serves as a technical advisor.
A community token ⚙️ Several community events have marked the history of Doge, here are just a few:
On 19 January 2014, the community organised a fundraiser to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican bobsleigh team. The team had qualified for the Sochi Winter Olympics, but couldn't afford to go.
On 25 March 2014, the community raised 67.8 million Dogecoins (about $55,000 at the time) with the aim of sponsoring NASCAR driver Josh Wise.
The DOGE-1 mission, announced in May 2021 by SpaceX and funded entirely in Dogecoin, aims to send a satellite into lunar orbit to collect data and broadcast video. However, the launch has suffered numerous delays and has yet to take place.
The DOGE token 🪙 There are 144.66 billion DOGEs in circulation.
DOGE serves as a means of payment and is used to cover transaction fees on its blockchain.
All tokens were created via mining.
Last year, Doge inflation was around 3.46%.
As the number of Doge issued each year is still around 5 billion, this means that its inflation rate is decreasing each year.
Here is the evolution of Doge ownership between three groups:
Whale: An address that holds more than 1% of the outstanding supply. Investor: An address that holds between 0.1% and 1% of the outstanding supply. Retail: An address that holds less than 0.1% of the outstanding supply. However, the vast majority of addresses in the "Whale" category are linked to exchange platforms.
Interesting fact: 22% of outstanding Doge are on the Robinhood investment app. This indicates that a large proportion of its investors come from the general public.
Ecosystem 💪 It is not possible to create smart contracts on the Doge network, which makes building an ecosystem quite difficult.
However, following the example of Bitcoin, it is possible to create ordinals, which are a kind of NFT. These ordinals are called DRC-20.
The largest DRC-20 is dogi, which has a capitalisation of $24 million and of which there are a total of 21 million.
In addition, there is another blockchain called Dogechain which works on the Proof of Stake principle. It is possible to send Doge to it using a bridge. The Dogechain has a burn mechanism to reduce the amount of Doge.
The Dogechain plans to migrate as layer 2 of Ethereum based on the Polygon CDK.
However, the bridge linking the Dogecoin blockchain and the Dogechain is centralised and therefore vulnerable to various attacks.
Competition ⚔️ Dogecoin is the sixth largest blockchain in terms of market capitalisation, and the eighth largest in terms of total capitalisation (FDV).
Dogecoin is also the most capitalised memecoin. Doge's value is roughly equivalent to the sum of the values of Shiba Inu, Pepe and Dogwifhat, which are in second, third and fourth place respectively.
In addition, Doge is one of the few memecoins that also serves as a blockchain-native token, used to pay transaction fees.
-> Survey: Why memecoins are an enduring trend in crypto
Regulation ⚖️ Developed as without the need for fundraising, this project should escape most financial regulations, like Bitcoin.
Where can you buy the DOGE token? 🛒 DOGE is available on most regulated exchange platforms, including Binance and Coinbase.
The Big Whale's opinion 🐳 Dogecoin is primarily a project supported by a strong community and has paved the way for many other memecoins.
Elon Musk's contribution to the project has helped it regain popularity. Part of the community hopes that Doge will one day be integrated into the X social network, although this seems unlikely at the moment.
Doge remains a highly speculative cryptocurrency, but its development, along with that of many other memecoins, reveals a profound trend towards changing the way we invest.
"Cryptocurrencies don't die because of falling prices, they die when people stop using them and talking about them," said Billy Markus , one of the creators of Dogecoin. "As long as people still want to use them and care about them, they will continue to exist."
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