Dogecoin is a joke. It is a joke at its origin (the Doge meme), a joke in the face of the seriousness of other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin, and it’s a joke in the face of those who believe something so silly could ever become so popular, successful and interesting.

For those not familiar with the cryptocurency world, Bitcoin (one could say the original digital currency in this context) blew up in value and publicity about a year ago, with coins that might have been bought for a few dollars suddenly becoming worth thousands. The success of Bitcoin inspired other cryptocurrencies to appear; along with this followed the development of Scrypt-based mining, notably used by Litecoin and it all it’s derivatives. This allowed people with less high-tech computers to participate in helping mine the currency, which in turn allowed more people to jump on the train to the moon as well.

Then, came Dogecoin.

Relatively new, Dogecoin started as a complete joke and just… kept growing. People were drawn to the silliness and friendliness of the community that the coin created; no longer were Cryptocurrency people considered market analysts or thought of as quite so serious. Instead, the Shibes (named for the dog in the Doge meme, the Shiba Inu) gathered a reputation as stupidly friendly, prone to randomly tipping one another with increasingly large amounts of Dogecoin.

Charity drives such as the project to send the Jamaican Bobsled team to the Olympics, and various other charity incentives like Doge4Kids, cemented Dogecoin’s community as a giving and, most importantly, a caring one.

And now, it’s starting to get bigger. And bigger.

The value of Dogecoin has, in the last month, risen incredibly. Thanks to the continuous publicity of the coin, the value has continued to grow, and grow. As we Shibes say, the currency is on it’s way to the Moon. The value in recent days has taken on a slight downward trend, but to the uber-friendly community it is but a short blip on the radar of their orgy of happiness and charity. As in any journey, there are going to be pit stops, short breaks to the bathroom – hell, we might even get lost for a very short while – but what’s important to remember is the journey continues. In this journey, I have personally been tipped on Reddit roughly 10,000 Doge on Reddit from various people over my time with Dogecoin. The generosity of people is always amazing; certain users such as silentShibe are known to tip people 1000 doge at a time. Someone recently calculated that he’s given away over 2 MILLION Doge to random people. That’s at least £1500 at today’s conversion rate.

In more recent news, Dogecoin has made a decision to change the growth of our currency to an inflationary one. Here’s some explanation of what it means. Essentially, a good thing long-term for the currency.

There is so much more information I could share about Dogecoin, but the problem is the community is updating constantly with new and interesting things – revelations, new charity drives and new ideas – that I could hardly keep up.

So, come join our journey to the moon! If you’re interested in getting started, be sure to visit the Dogecoin Subreddit, Dogecoin’s site itself, and also ask any questions you have in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer them!