20 postsThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issues a warning to consumers that says cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin have significant risks because they are unregulated:
If you trust someone else to hold your virtual currencies and something goes wrong, that company may not offer you the kind of help you expect from a bank or debit or credit card provider.
BTX Trader, a cryptocurrency trading platform, launches Celery. It is an exchange that aims to make buying Bitcoin and Dogecoin easy for first time users. CTO Divya Thakur says they chose to support Dogecoin because of its community:
We think dogecoin is a great community. It’s used in sites like reddit, it’s much higher volume than bitcoin tipping and there’s really no good hosted wallet for dogecoin.
Dogecoin developer Ileti rejects Litecoin’s offer to merge mining and claims that Litecoin is actually the weaker coin due to a lack of developer interest in it:
If users were to lose faith in Doge, and wanted to try another crypto – LTC is not what I’d recommend them to. LTC is currently surviving only based off the fact that it was the first Scrypt coin; and it’s doing poorly in comparison to how X11 and anonymized coins have done, due in fact to the competing Dev teams, in my opinion, being absolutely fantastic. They produce great ideas, and work long hours on their coin. It’s a labour of love which I personally feel, is sorely lacking in the LTC dev community.
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee offers to merge mining for Litecoin and Dogecoin, meaning users would receive Litecoin and Dogecoin simultaneously when mining. He says that Dogecoin is too unstable on its own and is destined to fail if they do not take his offer:
Dogecoin was not designed to survive. I’ve reached out to the Dogecoin community twice to help them. One thing about the Dogecoin mining is that it’s designed like a meme; it dies out in one year. It will happen because their block reward is halving so quickly. Their hashrate went pretty high and now it’s 1/15 the size of Litecoin’s
Adult entertainment website Hustler.com offers a lifetime or annual membership to the site in Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. The payments are handled by GoCoin digital payment processor. Hustler founder Larry Flynt says:
By partnering with GoCoin, our subscribers get extra privacy, and HUSTLER stays ahead of the curve by accepting new digital currencies.
Jerry Brown, the governor of California, passes a bill that reverses the state’s ban on alternative currencies. This includes rewards programs like Amazon Coins as well as crptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. The bill reads:
This bill makes clarifying changes to current law to ensure that various forms of alternative currency such as digital currency, points, coupons, or other objects of monetary value do not violate the law when those methods are used for the purchase of goods and services or the transmission of payments.
Jackson Palmer, founder of Dogecoin, criticizes the Dogecoin Reddit community. The market capitalization of Dogecoin drops from $30 million to around $23 million during an ongoing dispute between Palmer and user ‘moolah_’ over his place in the Dogecoin community:
You’re way too trigger happy with your legal team nonsense, and it puts a real damper on any of the fun we used to have around here. Like I said, I’m stepping away from this sadly cult-like subreddit.
Ultra PRO International, a company that sells various items based on the doge internet meme, files an application to trademark the word ‘doge’. They reassure Dogecoin users and other fans of the meme that they are not trying to prevent others from using the term:
We didn’t think about going after anyone with the filing, nor do we plan to, but we always file because typically people come after us.
@socks_the_fox no, we will not issue C&Ds, if we do receive the mark we will offer royalty-free rights to use it to vendors
— Ultra PRO (@UltraProIntl) June 23, 2014
Notch creates a parody game called Cliffhorse in two hours using Unity game development software. The game is free, but he jokingly accepts Dogecoin donations and raises 280,000 Doge (about 100 USD) in the first day of its release. https://twitter.com/notch/status/475387391185010689 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5q9AyQLlYk
Doge Vault, an online Dogecoin wallet, is hacked and at least 111 million Dogecoins are stolen, with a value of about $50,000. Doge Vault says:
It is believed the attacker gained access to the node on which Doge Vault’s virtual machines were stored, providing them with full access to our systems. It is likely our database was also exposed containing user account information; passwords were stored using a strong one-way hashing algorithm. All private keys for addresses are presumed compromised.
The Dogecoin Reddit community successfully raises $55,000 worth of Dogecoin to sponsor Wise’s car in the May 4 race in Talladega, Alabama. In return, Wise allows the Dogecoin community to design the car and fire suits for his team. He expresses that he wants the community to have full input on the car, saying he “wasn’t going to hold them back on anything they wanted. ”
Over 26,000,000 Dogecoin (about $25,000) are raised in a fundraiser, allowing the two-person Jamaican bobsleigh team to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Liam Butler, head of the Dogecoin Foundation, cites a 1993 movie featuring the Jamaican bobsleigh team as his motivation for starting the campaign:
As someone who grew up in the 90’s, Cool Runnings was the ultimate feel good movie about underdogs out of their element achieving their dreams.
Dogecoin becomes the first cryptocurrency to surpass Bitcoin in the number of transactions per day, with 102,252 transactions in just one day compared to Bitcoin’s 56,169. Dogecoin investor Ben Doernberg explains its success:
I’ve spent a ton of time on internet communities in my life and I think the Dogecoin subreddit is probably the most positive, optimistic and happy and friendly place on the internet I’ve ever seen.
AltQuick.co becomes the first currency exchange to allow trading between Dogecoin and USD. Before this point, users have to first exchange USD for Bitcoin in order to buy Dogecoin.
Thirty million Dogecoin (about $12,000) are stolen when Dogewallet is hacked. One user says:
I used dogewallet to give doges to my parents as a christmas gift. I really cannot afford to replace them.
The Reserve Bank of India warns citizens that virtual currencies (VCs) including Bitcoins, Dogecoins, and Litecoins could be dangerous.
The creation, trading or usage of VCs including Bitcoins, as a medium for payment are not authorised by any central bank or monetary authority. No regulatory approvals, registration or authorisation is stated to have been obtained by the entities concerned for carrying on such activities. As such, they may pose several risks to their users.
In just one day, Dogecoin drops from $0.0003 to $0.0002 due to an exploit that makes Dogecoin easy to mine with very little computing power. Multipools take advantage of this by mining large amounts of Dogecoin and selling it immediately. Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus says:
Basically multipools (and probably people too) sold a lot and ate up all the bids.
Dogecoin is created as a humorous alternative to Bitcoin. It is named after an internet meme involving shiba inu dogs or “doges” doing silly things. Markus gives a statement about his vision for Dogecoin:
I really want the community to not worry so much about the current value in dollars or even Bitcoin and just enjoy using this cryptocurrency and learning what cryptocurrency is.
Dogecoin is launched and trading of the currency begins. In its first day of trading, over 5,000 Dogecoin transactions are made.
