Dogecoin — a cryptocurrency that began as a satirical alternative to Bitcoin — has gained momentum of late following multiple favorable tweets by the Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in the past weeks. A series of tweets in May’21 spiked Dogecoin’s price to All-Time High of $0.73. Musk tweeted, “How much is that Doge in the window?”. These tweets indicated Musk’s support for the most trending altcoin.
Given the 54 million Twitter followers of the Tesla co-founder, the influence of his tweets on the price of cryptocurrencies should come as no surprise.
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a digital token that can be bought and sold like an investment. It is akin to cryptocurrencies in terms of code that is based off the script for Litecoin. However, Dogecoin has its own unique features. Unlike Bitcoin, which has a fixed supply of 21 million, Dogecoin has 129 billion coins in circulation and will continue to mine new coins over time.
How did it all start?
Dogecoin is a brainchild of Adobe Systems’ software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who launched it in 2013 as a fun alternative to other cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin began as a satire on the various crypto coins that were launched into the market at that time. It took its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that went viral many years ago.
The intent was to command people’s attention towards Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies to chart the path for innovations. In July 2020, a TikTok video went viral, aiming to escalate the price of Dogecoin to $1. The growing trend of #TikTokDogecoinChallenge sparked investors’ interest in Dogecoin, resulting in a 1,900% increase in its trading volume.
How does Dogecoin work?
Like Bitcoin, Dogecoin was intended to be a cryptocurrency, although not a serious one. Dogecoin is often utilized to incentivize people for crafting and disseminating digital content. The market capitalization of Dogecoin over $50 billion (as of June 2021).
- Network design
Dogecoin has been forked from Luckycoin blockchain — an open-source protocol. This means that it can be used and shared with anyone at no cost. Luckycoin itself was forked from Litecoin, which was further forked from Bitcoin.
Dogecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network based on the proof-of-work consensus algorithm. The miners participate in the Dogecoin network to validate transactions and safeguard the network against illegitimate activities or hacking attempts.
- Monetary policy
The total supply of Dogecoin was capped at 100 billion initially. In addition, the halving of block rewards was proposed after every 100,000 blocks until the block 600,000 was mined.
However, the idea to turn Dogecoin into an inflationary currency eliminated the supply cap in early 2014. As the hard cap was made redundant, the price of Dogecoin started plummeting and the incentive for miners diminished.
- Transaction processing
Dogecoin boasts of a block time of nearly 1 minute. It is remarkably lower than the block time of Bitcoin, which is 10 minutes.
What led to the growth of Dogecoin?
The growing popularity of Dogecoin is attributed to Elon Musk. He began tweeting about Dogecoin in February, sending out a flurry of tweets — the first being just the word “Doge”, followed by “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto”; “No highs, no lows, only Doge”; and “The Dogefather SNL May 8”. Some of Elon Musk’s tweets referring to Dogecoin even contributed to the new record-high prices of the currency. His tweets also garnered investors’ interest. One of the incidents of Dogecoin’s price surges even crashed the Robinhood trading application.
Musk is not the only celebrity to support and promote Dogecoin. Other celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and Gene Simmons have jumped on the bandwagon to promote Dogecoin.
Besides celebrities, favorable market conditions have played a significant role in catapulting Dogecoin’s growth and acceptance. Applications like Robinhood have simplified the betting paradigm for causal investors, making day-trading a pandemic pastime.
Dogecoin has also witnessed a cult status on Reddit, where a popular group decided to escalate its value “to the moon”. The price of Dogecoin soared over 600% as a result of that push.
How to buy Dogecoin using BelcoBTM?
If the potential of Dogecoin has encouraged you to invest in it, BelcoBTM services make the process secure and smooth for you.
BelcoBTM is a registered ATM kiosk fortified to facilitate the purchase of Bitcoins and Altcoins. Just 3 easy steps and you are ready to roll!
Step 1: Verify your Number
BelcoBTM expedites your Dogecoin buying process by eliminating hours or days of waiting time for account verification that online exchanges require. Quickly verify your mobile number and initiate the purchase. Keep your identity proof handy if you want to buy large volumes.
Step 2: Scan your Wallet Address
BelcoBTM is integrated with a QR code scanner that enables you to scan your wallet address easily, thereby eliminating any chances of errors that might occur while typing the wallet address manually.
Step 3: Deposit Cash to Complete your Transaction
Deposit the cash to the ATM to complete the purchase. Receive the Dogecoin in your wallet while expecting minimum latency.
With these three steps, you can easily buy Dogecoin even if you are a noob.
Closing thoughts
Dogecoin has picked up pace in terms of its acceptance by merchants as a payment method, however, it still has to traverse a long path before gaining mainstream adoption.
Although Dogecoin use-cases are being experimented with, the digital currency is more likely to continue riding the growth wave, owing to the support rolled out by Elon Musk and other influential celebrities.
