http://washingtonexaminer.com/internet-gold-doge-bitcoin-dogecoin/article/2541000POLICY: TECHNOLOGY
Internet gold: Doge + Bitcoin = Dogecoin
BY ASHE SCHOW | DECEMBER 19, 2013 AT 4:21 PM
TOPICS: BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL TECHNOLOGY BITCOIN CURRENCY
Two great Internet things have been combined: the popular meme Doge and the popular online currency Bitcoin.
The result? The fastest-growing digital currency on the market, Dogecoin.
If you’re unfamiliar with Doge, it’s an Internet meme featuring an adorable Shiba Inu surrounded by floating text:
And Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 that can now be used to purchase goods and services. It can even be used to donate to political campaigns.
After an impromptu joke on Twitter from Jackson Palmer, an Adobe employee, during the initial rise of Doge meme interest, budding entrepreneur and programmer Billy Markus decided he wanted a figurative bite at the apple.
Palmer registered the domain Dogecoin.com after initial Twitter responses to his joke, and Markus used Bitcoin's publicly available source code to create Dogecoin.
As you can imagine, Dogecoin works much like Bitcoin, but instead of an image of a gold coin with a “B” redesigned to look like the dollar sign, Dogecoin features a Shiba Inu Image.
The entire thing was picked up on the social sharing site Reddit, naturally, and, like the Doge meme, went viral.
Thanks to the attention Dogecoin received on Reddit, it is now the eighth-largest digital currency, with a market value of nearly $12 million and selling for $0.0012 per Dogecoin.
Dogecoin is now also listed on three different exchanges: Cryptsy, COINS-E and Coined Up.
The draw for Dogecoin, aside from its Internet culture popularity, is that it is much less expensive than Bitcoin, which currently costs $672.28 per Bitcoin.
Dogecoin doesn’t take itself as seriously as Bitcoin, which helped drive its popularity.
"It's not taking itself as seriously, it's not being used by people worrying about whether they'll become rich," Palmer told Business Insider. "It's something to share for thanks or kudos."
But Dogecoin is being accepted for goods and services, just like Bitcoin. Redditor clarituh claims that a Starbucks barista accepted Dogecoin as payment for coffee. And Redditor geekyhostess posted that she will accept Dogecoin as payment at her online store for the next 36 hours.
All of this attention for a three-week-old Internet meme currency.
Wow. Much success. Very bank. Such phenomenal.
