The rapid rise demonstrates the mania that has engulfed digital coins and has worried even the creator of dogecoin.
Jackson Palmer told Coindesk, a website that tracks cryptocurrency news and prices, that he had faith in the development team behind dogecoin’s technology, but that it “says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over two years has a $1bn-plus market cap”.
He added that the fact that most conversations about cryptocurrencies in the media concern investment and the potential to make money “draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based [on]".
Dogecoin was created in 2013 and took its name from a meme based around pictures of Shiba Inu dogs with garbled captions that relay the animal’s supposed internal monologue.
It began life in 2013 as a way to poke fun at the growing hype surrounding cryptocurrency and the potential of the blockchain technology that underpins it. Now it seems it has been swept up in the latest round of that very same hype.
“Dogecoin is an open source peer-to-peer digital currency, favored by Shiba Inus worldwide,” the cryptocurrency’s official website states. The creators are listed as Mr Palmer, along with “Shibetoshi Nakamoto”, a play on the alias of the founder of bitcoin, who is known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
All of the developers who work on dogecoin’s technology are reportedly volunteers. One of the team, Max Keller, told Coindesk that it was “a little scary” to find himself working on software that powers a billion-dollar network.
“This is quite the responsibility,” he added. “Still, I am proud of what we achieved and thankful to be part of such a great community."
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