What Is Dogecoin?

Introduced and officially launched on December 8th, 2013 Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency featuring a Shiba Inu from the “Doge” Internet meme appearing on its logo.

Dogecoin when compared to other cryptocurrencies has a fast initial coin production schedule.

As of 10 October 2014, over 94 billion Dogecoins have been mined. Dogecoin has few mainstream commercial applications, although, the currency has gained traction as an Internet tipping system. Through this social media users can grant Dogecoin tips to other users who provide interesting or noteworthy content.

Programmer Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon, created Dogecoin. He hoped to create a fun cryptocurrency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. He also wanted to distance it from the controversial history behind Bitcoin, that being Bitcoin’s association with the Silk Road online drug marketplace. At the same time, Jackson Palmer, a member of Adobe Systems’ marketing department in Sydney, Australia, was encouraged on Twitter by a student at Front Range Community College to make the idea a reality.

After it had received several mentions on Twitter, Palmer purchased the domain dogecoin.com and added a splash screen, which featured the coin’s logo and scattered Comic Sans text.

Markus saw the site linked in an IRC chat room, and then after reaching out to Palmer started efforts to create the currency. Markus based Dogecoin on an existing cryptocurrency, Luckycoin, which features a randomized reward that is received for mining a block. This behavior was later changed to a static block reward in March 2014. In turn, Luckycoin is based on Litecoin, with Litecoin also using scrypt technology in its proof-of-work algorithm.

The use of scrypt means that miners cannot use SHA-256 Bitcoin mining equipment, and that dedicated FPGA and ASIC devices used for mining are complicated to create.

The Dogecoin network was originally intended to produce 100 billion Dogecoins, but later, for better or for worse it was announced that the Dogecoin network would produce infinite Dogecoins.