20105%
This is the 1 Year return of dogecoin. Yes, it’s not a mistake.
$64.05Billion or Rs. 4.70lakh crore
This is the market capitalization of dogecoin as of 12/05/2021.
Crypto currencies are a hot topic nowadays that everybody discusses and wants to become rich quickly by investing in it. It reminds me of the time when the internet was a newcomer and everybody talked about it that how it could be the future and people wanted to invest in it to get rich quickly which eventually gave rise to the dot com bubble.
In fact, there are way more similarities of the crypto market in 2021 with that of what the internet had the around late 1990s. Various companies were starting up only to have a website registered to them and to do nothing more with it, similar to how so many cryptocurrencies are launching today only to have their space in the crypto space. Also, all the dotcom companies used the one platform on which they all worked i.e., WWW (World Wide Web), similar to how all the crypto currencies are based on blockchain technology.
Some real authentic companies were using the internet for problem-solving or to add value to peoples life (amazon, Microsoft, etc.) and then some companies just were starting to ride the tide of the dot com boom, companies opening with no intention to use the WWW platform for proving any sort of service or value whatsoever.
There are 9701 crypto currencies in existence as of writing the piece. Even you can create your own crypto. It will hardly take an hour and is also not very tough. Even easier than to create a dot com company back in the late 1990s. Many are doing it just so that maybe they could also ride the tide and become the next millionaire or even billionaire.
Some cryptocurrenices are trying hard to solve the first world problems like data privacy, data security, seamless currency transfer across the globe to name a few. Then some crypto currencies are just using the blockchain platform in the hope to make their owners filthy rich quickly. Many of these crypto currencies are scams that are trying hard to market themselves to the people to invest in it so that the owners could dump it when it reaches its high. Many of these scams were busted in 2017. Scams like BitConnect, One Coin to name a few. Guess it has again started to pick up the pace.
And then there is Dogecoin
What makes Dogecoin different from the above 2 types of crypto currencies is that Dogecoin was created as a joke/meme just for fun without any intention to fraud the people.
Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus founded Dogecoin in 2013. Billy Markus said this about its origin:
It was indeed created for sillies after Jackson Palmer made a flippant tweet about it that idea being the ‘next big thing’ and I threw it together, without any expectation or plan.
This shows the seriousness of the creator while making Dogecoin. He admits that it was just created as a joke.
It took about 3 hours to make [Dogecoin] — Billy Markus
Yes, it took 3 hours to make something which is now worth more than Dalal street giants like Sun pharm, Maruti Suzuki, Hero Motor crop, HCL, and many other.LOL.
The currency was derived from the open-source software project, Litecoin. Dogecoin was never intended to solve any problem or provide any value but it is not a scam either. It just exists as a meme in the entire crypto space.
Dogecoin in its early days was used as a tipping currency on Reddit. Only about a week after launching, Dogecoin became the second-most-tipped currency. The founders also created a Dogecoin foundation. This foundation used to gather a pool of Dogecoins and donate it for various social causes. Some notable donations made were:
$50k for Kenya’s water crisis.
$30k to Jamaican team to get to winter Olympics.
$55k to Nascar driver Josh Wise in March 2014.
The Dogecoin community was much active around 2015, but there have been no active projects by any of the founding members since then. Few community groups are still in existence though. But it all went quiet around 2016–17. Billy Markus sold all his dogecoin back in 2015.
It was a mild, fun crypto currency that no one took seriously and everyone played around with while making some donations along the way. All was fine until it wasn’t until it happened and suddenly it all changed.
Enter Elon Musk
On 2nd April 2019 Elon Musk tweeted this:
And since then he has been on a spree on promoting and giving shoutouts to Dogecoin. After each of his tweets, Dogecoin had seen a massive surge in its value.
Many other celebrities have also boosted this meme. Some prominent name includes Mark Cuban, Jake Paul, Kevin Joans, Mia Khalifa, rapper Lil’ Yachtyand and Snoop dog:
Subreddit community users WallStreetBets and SatoshiStreetBets planned to send the currency “to the moon” — or at least to their goal of $1 per coin in January 2021
Since then Dogecoin has seen a massive surge in its value. Celebrities and people alike talk to take its price such high that it could reach the moon. Take Dogecoin to the moon is what trending nowadays. Here is the popular motto song on Dogecoin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3NWyh8a5t0
watch this, it's really fun.
And guess what? it might literally happen as Elon Musk on May 10, 2021, has announced a new SpaceX space mission with the new satellite named Doge-1. This satellite will go to the moon. The entire mission will be funded by Dogecoin. Hence Dogecoin is going to the moon literally.
This meme has started Turing into some real business now. People from all over the world are rushing to buy Dogecoin. The demand surge was so much that in April the servers of exchanges like Coinbase and Robinhood have crashed due to the volume of Dogecoin traded. Some people are investing their retirement savings or students putting the tuition fees into Dogecoin. When people start putting money that they cannot afford to lose into a meme then you realize how serious it is becoming. This meme is not funny anymore.
Does it have any actual worth
Unlike bitcoin, Dogecoins are not limited in number. Every single day around 14.4million dogecoins enters the system. Comparing it with bitcoins which are only going to be 21 million in total. Already there are more than 100 billion Dogecoins in the system. Also, unlike Ethereum or Polkadot there is no real-world problem that Dogecoin solves except for Elon Musk maybe. And since it is not scarce nor provides any value, Dogecoin has no intrinsic value. Still, everyone wants to take Dogecoin to $1.
Akand Sitra of cryptocurrency risk management platform TRM Labs claims that Dogecoin itself is a scam, with over 65% of Dogecoins held by 98 wallets across the world. He also claims that the single largest wallet holds 28% of all Dogecoins, and five wallets control 40% of the coin’s entire supply.- Wikipedia
Conclusion
Dogecoin has gone way beyond what it was originally intended to be. In today’s interconnected world it is so easy for a meme to go viral. People enjoy these viral trends for a while and then let it be. But now these viral trends have also started talking business, involving real-world money. Trends like Gamestop and Dogecoin have involved money more than billions of dollars. Influencing people like Elon Musk support it. At this point, you start to wonder whether it is still a meme.
Many of you might regret not being a part of this ride while everybody around you is making a quick buck from it. And if you thinking that this trend is going to continue then remember even though Dogecoin has started entering into some serious business territory lately but it is still a meme. So always approach it like one. Do not get carried away by thinking that might bring some real value to the table in the future. Thanks for reading.
This article is not intended to be financial advice. So don’t be stupid to take any financial decision based on what is said above.
Thanks, Jessica Wildfire for sharing insights on this topic.
