Dogecoin started out as a joke. Now it’s a top 10 digital currency worth $40 billion.
The cryptocurrency is based on the “Doge” meme, which rose to popularity in late 2013. The meme portrays a Shiba Inu dog alongside nonsensical phrases in multicolored, Comic Sans-font text.
Created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin was intended to be used as a faster but “fun” alternative to bitcoin. It has since found a growing community online.
And now, defying all odds, dogecoin has a total market value of more than $40 billion, according to crypto market data site CoinGecko, adding over $20 billion in the last 24 hours. The digital token reached an all-time high of 32 cents Friday morning, more than doubling in price from a day ago.
It’s not the first time dogecoin has seen a wild climb. Like many cryptocurrencies, it has a tendency for volatile swings in price. In 2018, dogecoin’s price began rising in tandem with other popular digital currencies. It’s been fairly off the radar since then. But earlier this year, dogecoin skyrocketed on the back of enthusiasm from a Reddit group called SatoshiStreetBets.
Similar to the subreddit WallStreetBets, which helped fuel a rally in GameStop shares at the start of 2021, SatoshiStreetBets aims to pump up the prices of cryptocurrencies.
Dogecoin has been climbing again in the past week, hitting 10 cents a coin for the first time on Wednesday. It’s risen by a whopping 400% in the last seven days.
