A Guide To Dogecoin

For a digital coin that started out with a lot of tongue-in-cheek, Dogecoin has certainly surprised many, possibly even the founders of the project most of all. While some digital coins have emerged as distinct pokes at the existing landscape of the cryptosphere, Dogecoin for some reason got taken seriously.

Somehow, in spite of its silliness, appearing as a mock-up of bitcoin at the time, Dogecoin has found wide appeal and is listed way ahead of many others on today’s digital exchanges.

Doge is supported by multiple-coin wallets like Jaxx and others. Many users will recognize the company mascot and internet meme “Doge” – a Shiba Inu, the Japanese dog breed that the project has adopted as their mascot logo.

The Dogecoin project launched in December 2013. Co-founders Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus had two aims in the launch. Firstly, to have a satirical poke at bitcoin and the cryptosphere as a whole. At the time, ridiculous tokens were emerging, many reaching a market cap of several million, before blowing away for the hot wind they had been all along.

Secondly, the pair imagined a digital currency that was more accessible, broadly usable and user-friendly – not to mention fun – than bitcoin. Dogecoin differs from many altcoins in that it has a massive supply, measured in the hundreds of billions of tokens, thus ensuring that each unit of currency would always carry a low price. The founders also envisaged the currency being employed as a tip for content creators on platforms like YouTube and Reddit.

The creators cottoned onto 2013’s popular Doge meme in naming the project, and some innovative and guerrilla marketing tactics employed online soon saw the coin rising in popularity all throughout 2013 and beyond.

Dogecoin was a fork of Luckycoin, which itself was a fork of Litecoin. Dogecoin thus resembles Litecoin very closely, but there are of course key differences between the two projects.

Dogecoin, for example, employs the Scrypt algorithm, something originally developed to inhibit mining by Bitcoin ASICs. Although Scrypt ASIC miners are today a common occurrence, in 2013 that wasn’t the case at all. Technically, Dogecoin also has a much shorter block time than Litecoin.

Dogecoin was always going to remain accessible in all ways, designed as it was with a seemingly interminable token supply. This is best depicted by the fact that while the coin’s market cap sits at around a quarter billion, individual tokens still typically cost less than a cent.

The above construct was another purposeful decision by the founders, much like the absence of a fixed supply limit on the coin. Some users bemoan this fact as meaning that – with estimates that an additional 5.2 billion tokens will be minted each year – the currency will be terminally inhibited from rising in price.

One upshot of the low coin price is that transaction fees are often incomparably lower than other digital coins. The network speed means transactions are brisk with prompt confirmations as well.

A recent price spike at the end of last year into early January 2018 saw co-founder Palmer speculate on his YouTube channel that it was probably the result of pump and dump activity. At the time, he advised users to stay out until the price returned to legacy stability.

In spite of the spoof nature of Dogecoin, it has become an entrenched member of the cryptosphere, and users point to the coin’s very low transaction fees and rapid turnaround times as legitimately valuable.

Because of the coin’s stable price – another wonder among digital currencies – many traders employ Dogecoin as a transactional currency within the broader crypto-community. In one example, it often enough suits many traders to convert their bitcoin into Dogecoin in order to withdraw funds, thus avoiding Bitcoin’s expensive transaction fees. The Dogecoin will be later returned to a different currency when needed.

There is another benefit derived of the coin for shrewd penny cap traders. Since the coin’s price is so low, it’s possible to buy up a few million and await even a modest price increase for a moment, which will then lead to a high-volume-low-margin substantial profit from having sat on so many Dogecoin tokens. This is nothing but the legacy small cap approach applied to crypto trading, but the coin is unique in some of the usual metrics of cryptocurrencies, which it wholly flouts.

Dogecoin is also the anomaly coin as it is widely listed on digital exchanges, for a combination or reasons – many of which echo among users, too. Immediate exchange services like Flyp.me and ShapeShift also accommodate Dogecoin. Because the currency is integrated with ShapeShift, users can employ it to pay for a wide range of goods and services that are also tied into the ShapeShift API.

Dogecoin has had its share of controversy and upset, and the coin has blown in the wind on occasion as cheekily as it has made the world its empire. There was the Moolah incident with theft thrown in for good measure, and few other altcoins have played so nonchalant with user affection as Dogecoin, a testimony to its satirical origins.

Perhaps more ominously, the digital currency was dropped from the Exodus wallet as Exodus alleged that there is no development on the Dogecoin blockchain producing updates that keep things fluid.

The previous update of the network had been during November 2015, prior to Exodus adopting their stance. At the time, Exodus said that it had approached Dogecoin but that it appeared any updates were low on the list of priorities.

With all of that said, the ease of use and overall potential of Dogecoin going into the future far outshines some dark moments. The coin retains its cheeky attraction and has finally shed its own amusement at its rampant success, to become more committed to true development and application.

The currency has maintained its initial promise to users – that of an uncomplicated, low-cost digital coin that performs on a host of fronts in a manner other altcoins still only dream about. In a nutshell, while it emerged with a prank character, whether by design or sheer fluke, Dogecoin has actually become a regular player that rubs shoulders with big names in the Industry.

Since user sentiment around the intrinsic stance and benefits of Dogecoin is unlikely to change anytime soon, it can be safely imagined that the currency will not just remain, but in fact prosper going forward. If the unexpected and copious uptake at launch is anything to go by, Dogecoin’s future looks bright, perhaps even brighter than ever, in 2018.

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