Dogecoin was the very first meme-inspired cryptocurrency in the crypto market where currently there are hundreds of meme coins. However, none of those have managed to reach the level of popularity comparable to that of Dogecoin (DOGE).
The coin that started as a joke and parody on the world’s largest (and the earliest) cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, today DOGE is a firm member of the top ten cryptos list with a market capitalization of $15,161,944,268.
History of Dogecoin Creation
Created by the efforts of two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin was released to the market in December 2013. They used the Bitcoin code for making their cryptocurrency which was inspired by Kabosu – the famous Shiba Inu dog whose photos had gone viral on social media a few years before that.
2013 was a few years after the enigmatic Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto had left the public space and his brainchild BTC began to gain serious traction thanks to the community of developers in whose hands Satoshi left Bitcoin. Unlike BTC, DOGE was a fun and light-hearted cryptocurrency meant for fun rather than payments originally. However, both Jackson and Palmer quit the project soon after launch, leaving it in the hands of the community that was keen to keep working on this cryptocurrency and improve it.
Dogecoin was the third cryptocurrency ever to appear after Bitcoin and then Litecoin (LTC). DOGE is even mined together with LTC, meaning that miners get rewards in both coins without using extra mining power.
DOGE Catches Elon Musk’s Eye
In about 2017-2018, Dogecoin caught the attention of tech billionaire and meme lover Elon Musk known for his unpredictable and often meme-driven social media presence with hundreds of millions of followers on social media. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX began frequently mentioning DOGE and Kabosu in his tweets, showing his love for both. Recently, Musk admitted that he loves both memes and dogs, therefore, Dogecoin remains his favorite cryptocurrency. Besides, he believes it is much better adopted for payments than Bitcoin.
Since 2017-2018, Musk often tweeted about Dogecoin, often making the price go up with his tweets that were frequently light-hearted and contained nothing but memes. Still, the coin’s community felt the support of this titan of the business world and the Dogecoin Foundation began to continue developing DOGE, adding improvements to its code base. Back then, DOGE was trading in a range of $0.0020 per coin.
The peak time for Dogecoin was 2021, when Elon Musk jokingly called himself “The DogeFather” in a tweet and then also made a debut on the mega popular Saturday Night Live TV show, where he spoke a lot about DOGE, revealing it to a multi-million audience. This pushed the meme cryptocurrency to an all-time high of $0.7376 on May 8. Currently, DOGE has gone 85.94% under that historic peak level. Despite this tremendous decline, DOGE has managed to keep its army of followers who are holding it and continue to use it no matter what.
Current Dogecoin Utility and Price Future
Currently, Dogecoin is being actively used for tipping content creators on the X platform (formerly Twitter) and fundraising for various initiatives and projects. Besides, Dogecoin, being very cheap, is used by many for fun investment and for easy entering the cryptocurrency world. Many influencers, including Shark Tank co-host, believe that meme cryptocurrencies, including DOGE, are a great tool for attracting new retail investors who start by buying Dogecoin and then are likely to move on to acquiring serious cryptos, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others.
As for Dogecoin utility, Elon Musk has been actively increasing it. Over the past few years, he added DOGE as a payment method to his Tesla and SpaceX online stores where users are able to pay for merchandise with this meme coin.
Besides, in 2023, Elon Musk’s Boring Company created a new perfume with a rather ironic name “Burnt Hair”. It turned out to be a collector’s item rather than perfume actually worth wearing. Among the payment options for this product there was also Dogecoin, along with other cryptocurrencies.
Dogecoin Price Prospects
At press-time, Dogecoin is changing hands at $0.1032 after roughly a 6% decline in the last day.
Large hopes have been placed into Elon Musk’s plans to create a system of internal payments on his X app (rebranded from Twitter after Musk purchased the company in 2022). Among the licenses that the company has been securing this year have been ones for processing cryptocurrency payments. Even though Musk has made it clear several times that none of his companies, including X, intend to create and launch their own crypto, the DOGE army cherishes hopes that Musk will add Dogecoin to official internal payment options on X.
Therefore, many experts believe that in the next few years Dogecoin can at least certainly surpass the $1 level. However, if Musk fails to meet the community’s expectations and will not integrate DOGE on the X platform, prospects of this meme crypto are likely to remain vague over lack of a clear use case for it and its infinite supply with roughly 10,000 DOGE produced by miners every minute and 145,500,896,384 DOGE currently circulating the market.