Bitcoin users will remember Doge, a misspelled use of the word “dog,” as the internet meme depicting the Japanese Shiba Inu dog breed with its multicolored text and questionable grammar.
Initially, DOGE was marketed as a fun version of Bitcoin, but its value has since grown, and it’s now of the most popular coins. There’s a cryptocurrency platform that accepts Dogecoin.
It’s interesting to know how the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency came about. Meme enthusiasts liked DOGE in 2013, posting funny comments on Reddit and Tumblr.
A Dogecoin price chart has shown rising graphs ever since. So, what makes Dogecoin so popular?
According to its creator, Jackson Palmer, Doge brought a friendly face to crypto. At a time when Bitcoin was stigmatized for money laundering and drug purchases, Dogecoin offered a cleaner image of a cryptocurrency. Reddit became the currency of “generosity” in 2014 when several charitable initiatives entered the space.
Bitcoin’s “good” case and charity
Since 2014, the Dogecoin Foundation has been a non-profit corporation registered in Colorado after legitimate fundraising requests started appearing in r/Dogecoin Reddit.
At the Sochi Olympics, Dogecoin sponsored the Jamaican bobsled team with a fundraiser that raised $30,000 in Dogecoin.
In March of that year, the community donated $50,000 in Dogecoin to charity: water to support a water project in Kenya. The organization built two water wells with donations.
By then, DOGE had come to mean “Do Only Good Everyday” on Reddit.
Twitter, Reddit, and tipping tools
Micro-tipping services let users send Dogecoin to each other to post appreciated content. Tipping has become a norm especially for membership and subscription platforms that have become accustomed to tipping one another for good content.
Micro-tipping helped DOGE, and other cryptocurrencies get adopted early. DOGE became the most popular cryptocurrency for tipping in just a few months, with over 70,000 accounts.
However, some micro-tipping platforms that ended up bankrupt took all Dogecoin held on the platform to cover operating costs. Users of third-party tipping tools suddenly lost their money without any recourse.
TikTok’s Doge community
Dogecoin’s success was sealed when TikTok’s new craze hit in 2020.
There was already a community-driven pump before the Reddit community-driven GameStop pump after a TikToker challenged TikTok users to invest only $25 each in raising DOGE’s price.
The TikTok user’s message went viral in hours, and the cryptocurrency price rose by 20%. Other TikTokers have followed the same example and adopted similar challenges.
A rise in popularity of meme coins
A phenomenal success like Dogecoin has paved the way for meme coins to take over the cryptocurrency market. Memes go beyond corporations’ and big institutions’ appetite for money-making assets.
Trading apps simplify trading and allow even non-tech-savvy people to invest in stocks and cryptocurrencies. This has helped increase small investors’ interest in these investments.
Together, small investors can fight big powers, whales, and speculators with “goodness” and “assets of the people,” such as Dogecoin and other meme coins.
Can Dogecoin survive?
Historically, the network effect has accepted new technologies like the telephone and the Internet.
It’s no secret that the cryptocurrency industry is growing, but Dogecoin is one of the most popular, thanks partly to its social media popularity.
The crypto community has criticized Dogecoin’s high concentration of wealth in a few hands. About 20 Dogecoin wallet addresses own over 50% of Dogecoin’s circulating supply, so if one of them sells suddenly, it could cause a big price shock.
We’ll have to wait and see if DOGE ends up being a playful meme coin, or something much more impactful.
McClatchy newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
Originally published
