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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Sometimes a joke can take a life of its own. This is the tale of Dogecoin, a joke-currency that became worth $80 billion; yes, that is a “b” at the beginning of the word… (Serrels, 2021). The joke currency is probably the most internet-specific, never-heard-before, genre of humor ever. It most certainly was unheard of. Sure, due to hyperinflation some central banks were forced to print banknotes of unlikely values, such as the German 5 billion Marks banknote printed in 1923, by the Weimar Republic. However, there was no humorous intention at all. The Dogecoin instead was started as a joke. There are multiple confirmations of this fact (Kochkodin, 2021; Salzman, 2021). So what exactly is the story?
Dogecoin was started in 2013 by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus. Palmer made a mashup between two memes. The first one was the Doge meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge) which represent a Shiba Inu dog and its inner monologue. An example can be found in Figure 8.1.
Doge (a misspelling for “dog” according to Nani, 2022) memes started around 2012, on Reddit and 4chan. The second meme of the mashup was Bitcoin. On December 8, 2013, Palmer announced Dogecoin (Figure 8.2), on the Bitcoin Forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361813.0). Note how the style of the multicolored snippets of inner monologue is respected, as well as the “doggie” syntax/spelling, reminiscent of LOLCats talk. Bitcoin is a lot harder to explain than the doge meme, so we need to do a little digression here and discuss cryptocurrencies.
Billy Markus saw the announcement on the web page and decided to create a “fun cryptocurrency.” He modified preexisting code, for example replacing “mine” with “dig” (because dogs dig…), but also introducing some technical improvements, such as having more Dogecoins than Bitcoins. The point is that it was not a particularly complex process, and some of it was done, according to Serrels (2021), during Markus's lunch breaks.
Bitcoin: The Cryptocurrency that Started It All
What is a cryptocurrency? Well, what is a currency? A currency was an agreement between a government and people that in exchange for a piece of paper the government would give you a certain amount of gold or other precious metals (e.g., silver, platinum). This was known as the gold standard.
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