Is Dogecoin Worth It?
Why is Dogecoin going down along with Bitcoin? Or do you think it can reach $1 in a sooner perspective?
We conducted our own research on a “meme cryptocurrency” and revealed different outcomes. Also, we brought the “Elon Musk effect” to life again. So, it is worth it.
Thus, before you make an investment decision, you may want to know what Dogecoin is, how it is mined, and which wallet you should use.
1. What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a unique open-source cryptocurrency. Its symbol is the famous Internet meme DOGE, namely, a hunting dog of the Japanese breed Shiba Inu. It started rising to prominence in 2013 when Bitcoin was experiencing the first popularity boom.
At the onset, Dogecoin was considered a joke and not a serious investment project. However, a few months after the release, Dogecoin gained wide popularity, rising in price by 300 % and entering the top ten popular cryptocurrencies worldwide. Sooner, its market capitalization was around 1 billion. To date, it has grown 80 times higher than that amount. Also, there are 130 billion coins in the Dogecoin circulation.
According to general parameters, it is based on the Litecoin cryptocurrency. There is a belief that all changes and updates applicable to Litecoin do also apply to Dogecoin. Regardless, there are a few sufficient differences.
For instance:
- The block opening time in Dogecoin takes just one minute (to compare, in Litecoin, it takes two and a half minutes).
- Dogecoin has a faster period required to confirm the transaction, which takes only six minutes (in Litecoin, it takes fifteen minutes to complete one).
Despite the value of Dogecoin consists of the Doge meme, its distinctive features are:
- Initially, there was a one hundred billion limit on issuing the coins. Regardless, later, the Dogecoin developers decided to make it unlimited.
- Low commission for transactions compared to relevant payments in other networks. As a rule, the amount does not exceed more than one cent, whereas, in the network, the commission for Bitcoin can reach $10.
- The low cost of crypto allows any interested user to purchase them, regardless of the available investment amount.
- Dogecoin has a practical application — the netizens use it to make payments for various goods and services on the Internet. In addition, its circulation is not prohibited even in those countries where Bitcoin is not allowed.
- It is relatively easy to mine Dogecoin, comparing to other cryptocurrencies.
2. Who Owns Dogecoin?
The owners or creators of Dogecoin are IT specialists Billy Marcus (Portland, US) and Jackson Palmer (Sydney, Australia). Markus was the first who got the idea of creating an affordable cryptocurrency for everyone, regardless of their financial situation. It was supposed to be an alternative to pricey Bitcoin. In addition, he wanted to protect his idea from the controversial reputation that touched other cryptocurrencies.
“I found that there is a huge market with new coins appearing daily, and sometimes hourly. And each of them was supposed to cost a lot of money and take over the galaxy. I thought it was stupid. And given the number of them, I decided that it would be easy to make my own crypto.” — Billy Marcus
Speaking of Palmer, he developed a standard version of the website dogecoin.com and registered that domain on the Internet. Interestingly, Doge is a favorite meme of an Australian developer. Therefore, the image of Shiba Inu with the Comic Sans MS font became the first object to appear on the landing page. Subsequently, it appeared on the digital coin itself.
Here’s what Dogecoin co-creator tells about his experience.
It is interesting that the Dogecoin creators’ duo still exists under the nickname “Shibetoshi Nakamoto.” It tributes the founding father of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general — Satoshi Nakamoto. Unfortunately, Jackson Palmer left the project back in 2015 but remains a co-creator. At the moment, Max Keller is a lead developer for Dogecoin; Ross Nichol and Patrick Lodder are responsible for the cryptocurrency’s further development.
3. How to Buy Dogecoin?
If you want to buy Dogecoin, you basically need to:
a) create an autonomous wallet;
b) find a “doge-changer” available in your location;
c) transfer crypto to your bank account or card.
Many sources recommend performing each action through different applications and sites.
However, if you are a CIS country resident, all these steps can be done through one platform — Altynex, available for iOS and Android users. The online service provides an API wallet (sending and receiving payments via API calls) for all users. It is accompanied by the possibility of exchanging crypto and subsequent withdrawal of funds.
In general, the process looks simple:
1. You need to register on the Altynex platform. The deposit can be opened by replenishing a bank card or account in any way convenient: through an ATM, a transfer, the Kassa24 system, or another terminal.
2. Next, the money can be converted to one of the cryptocurrencies available on the Altynex platform. In our case, it will be Dogecoin.
3. The last action will be the withdrawal of funds. To complete this, you need to sell the purchased cryptocurrency and transfer the received amount back to your bank account or card.
Alternatively, you may consider buying Dogecoin through a cryptomat or a Bitcoin ATM. If you need to use any of them worldwide, use the following website — coinatmradar.com. The cryptomat allows you to buy crypto coins for cash. To complete this, select the “Buy” option on the screen, specify the amount of Doge and your wallet details, entered it via a QR code. After inserting the bills into the bill acceptor, the coins will be sent to the wallet immediately. As we mentioned earlier, transactions with Dogecoin are incredibly fast.
Surprisingly, there are hundreds of Bitcoin ATMs worldwide, and this one in Almaty, Kazakhstan is not an exception.
4. How Dogecoin is Mined?
Generally, there are three simple methods on how Dogecoin is mined:
- Individual or solo mining
- Mining pools
- Cloud mining
Let us explain each of them in brief:
- Solo mining. That implies an individual process of searching for blocks on your own PC. Regardless, having a random device at home is not enough. Ideally, it should possess the most powerful technical characteristics. According to experts, it is the least effective method since it is clearly outdated: the peak was attained at the end of 2013 — the beginning of 2014. That period, as far as you know, was also the heyday of Dogecoin. Moreover, the search for the desired block may be remarkably time-consuming. Albeit the device is found, it will still consume tons of electricity. A similar point applies to the cost of a “supercomputer.” As a result, after spending much effort, you risk not earning anything at all.
- Mining pools. Roughly speaking, this is group mining, in which several miners combine the computing power of their PCs. This method allows small “crypto-miners” to reduce the risks of losing money and increase the chances of profit — it significantly increases their future reward coefficient. The pool participation also contributes to saving money and electricity compared to solo mining. In total, three pools are allocated for productive Dogecoin mining in 2021. All of them are multi-user and together make up the main power of the network:
- aikapool.com — the oldest and the largest mining pools. It supports some assets based on the Scrypt algorithm.
- multipool.us — perfect for the mixed mining of Litecoin and Dogecoin — the user may mine two coins at once without losing power.
- prohashing.com — represented in a few markets. Its specialty is that the user does not have to take the reward with mined coins — you can choose to deposit any supported currency.
3. Cloud mining. It is more than a mining process. Here computing power is “rented” from the Data Center. Based on the monthly or annual plan agreed upon in the contract, you have to pay a certain fee. Next, Dogecoin is mined to the Center through a mining pool and then transferred to you, depending on the amount of utilized computing power. A tremendous disadvantage is a limited time. Due to that reason, you risk losing Dogecoin if its price goes down the operational and energy production costs. Nonetheless, same with the case of a mining pool, it is not obligatory to own a super PC. It will be enough for you to start a dogecoin wallet. The most popular platforms for cloud mining are Genesis Mining and Nicehash.
5. Why Dogecoin is Going Up?
Given that Dogecoin is a meme cryptocurrency, its price started going up due to the splash in social networks and YouTube. Also, we should not forget about the patronage of famous billionaires. In mid-2020, viral videos in Tiktok claimed that “they could all get rich” if they raised the value of Dogecoin to $1. After that, Dogecoin’s price skyrocketed by 20 %.
Users of Reddit (mainly US citizens) provoked the cryptocurrency growth due to the mass purchase. Referring to the billionaires, Elon Musk (who no longer needs an introduction) began to elaborate on the topic. One of the earliest mentions of Dogecoin on his Twitter account was a poll to choose prominent crypto:
After a few months, such publications had become frequent, and soon the “Elon Musk effect” appeared at a new level. According to the research company Piplsay, about 40 % of investors have at least considered the idea of trading with Dogecoin thanks to the billionaire’s tweets. Indeed, we should not underestimate Musk’s influence on Twitter — 58 million followers watch out for his daily publications.
Following his announcement of his upcoming appearance on SNL, the price of Dogecoin surged by 24 % from $0.25 to $0.31 in all crypto markets.
The meme crypto has reached a record for the entire period of its presence — the market capitalization exceeded $50 billion, entering the top-4 most popular cryptocurrencies worldwide. Moreover, according to RBC, since the beginning of the year, the price of Dogecoin has risen by as much as 63 times.
Currently, Dogecoin’s price is not rising at such a rapid rate as before. After the tweet from July 2nd, the price had mounted by only 3.09 %. However, Elon Musk recently announced his support for Dogecoin’s subsidiary crypto — Baby Doge.
The price of a new token had progressed by 228.3 % a day after that Twitter publication. Currently, it is $0.000000001516 and breaks growth records daily (+1700 % per day).
5. Dogecoin Prediction
At this stage, Dogecoin is going through tough times in the crypto market. According to the latest data from Investing Cube, Dogecoin dropped out of all kinds of top-50 ratings: a fortnight ago, it plummeted by 12 %. According to our sources, its current price is $0.1971. Moreover, the market capitalization of Dogecoin has become equal to $28 billion. Later, the meme cryptocurrency has lost a few positions on the ‘most popular crypto’ lists, yielding the throne to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and, interestingly, Ripple!
Regardless of those statements, the opinions of experts were divided into two camps. On the one hand, hedge fund sales specialist Elliott Laybourne does not guarantee anything positive for Dogecoin soon. He says the price is to be collapsed to $0.1702 — it is 22% lower than the present. Another expert, crypto-journalist Corey Mann, is being more optimistic:
“First and foremost, Dogecoin is the seventh largest cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of more than $30 billion. It also has many prominent investors and a massive following on social media.
But this isn’t why a bullish outlook is in play. In general, it comes down to Dogecoin’s formation of a symmetrical triangle pattern. This is a continuation pattern that is characterized by two converging trend lines.
After a period of consolidation, the Dogecoin price will breakout, or breakdown, from the trendline. And most experts are predicting a bullish trend with the potential for gains of more than 20%”.
In addition to official sources, we also decided to look into Quora and ask about the predictions of random, but crypto-experienced Internet users:
Considering Dogecoin’s ups and down in price changes, there is no solid prediction for the crypto. Therefore, we will be looking forward to keeping you updated. As of now, we declare: Dogecoin is worth it, whether it is built around a meme hype or not.
To read the Russian version of this article, click here.
