Back in late 2013, Bitcoin was having its first real moment. It had just crossed the $1,000 mark, and suddenly everyone, from Wall Street sharks to college kids, wanted a piece of the action.
Crypto forums were flooded with speculation. Investors were circling. New startups seemed to launch every other week. It was a digital gold rush. But not everyone was buying into the hype.
How Jackson Palmer Turned a Joke into a Movement
Half a world away from the noise of Silicon Valley, Jackson Palmer, a product marketing manager at Adobe’s Sydney office, was watching the frenzy unfold with more than a little skepticism.
He wasn’t against crypto; he was knee-deep in tech himself, but something about the space rubbed him the wrong way. To him, it all felt a bit self-important. A bit exclusive. Like a clubhouse built on jargon and bravado.
So he did what a certain type of internet nerd does best: he cracked a joke online.
From his desk in Australia, Palmer fired off a tweet: “Invest in Dogecoin, the next big thing.”
It was satire, plain and simple. A jab at the seriousness of crypto culture mixed with a wink to the absurdity of internet memes. He even tossed the face of a Shiba Inu, the iconic “Doge” meme, onto a fake coin and slapped it on a website he made, Dogecoin.com. The site was full of fake buzzwords, Comic Sans fonts, and tongue-in-cheek crypto lingo.
It wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. Just a throwaway joke on the internet. A meme on top of another meme. But, like most things born online, it took on a life of its own.
In late 2013, Jackson Palmer was working at Adobe’s Sydney office when he fired off a tweet that no one thought much of, but it ended up shaking crypto culture. Bitcoin was everywhere back then, but to Palmer, it felt overhyped and full of people taking it way too seriously. So, like anyone online, he turned it into a joke.
It was meant as satire. To give it a visual punch, Palmer grabbed the face of the viral Shiba Inu from the Doge meme, the one surrounded by Comic Sans phrases like “such wow” and “very currency”, and combined it with a fake crypto logo. He bought the domain Dogecoin.com, threw together a homepage filled with ironic crypto jargon, and left it at that.
It was never meant to be real. Just a parody, a commentary on an industry taking itself too seriously. But the internet had other plans.
Billy Markus and the Moment It Became Real
Over 12,000 kilometers away, in Portland, Oregon, a software engineer named Billy Markus was scrolling through the site and saw something more.
Markus wasn’t into crypto like that. He wasn’t chasing the next Bitcoin or trying to shake up the system. Just a quiet IBM engineer who liked messing with open-source code. He’d even made a coin before Bell’s Coin, but it went nowhere.
Dogecoin felt different to him. It wasn’t trying to make a big statement or change the world. It was silly, fun, and surprisingly easy to get into, the exact opposite of how most crypto projects felt back then. That’s what pulled him in.
Billy Markus wasn’t trying to change the world. He was an engineer at IBM who liked playing around with code after work. He’d even tried launching his own crypto, Bell’s Coin, but it went nowhere.
Dogecoin caught his eye because it was different. It wasn’t serious, didn’t have a big mission, and wasn’t pretending to fix global finance. It was just a fun, weird idea, and that’s what made it interesting.
They had never met, but within weeks, they were turning the joke into something real. Markus used Litecoin’s code as a base, then made a few key changes: he switched the mining system to Scrypt (so regular people could mine it), sped up block times to one minute, and added a twist—a random reward system, where miners could get anything from a few DOGE to hundreds of thousands.
Dogecoin launched on December 6, 2013. What started as a meme is now live on the blockchain.
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a form of digital money. It was made to let people send small amounts of value online, without needing a bank or payment company in the middle. It works on its own network, where users can transfer coins directly to each other.
Dogecoin’s code wasn’t anything original. It was basically copied from Luckycoin, which came from Litecoin, which itself was built on Bitcoin. So yeah, the structure was similar, but that’s where it stopped.
Dogecoin was built to feel easy, not serious, not complex.
There are a few big differences:
- Speed: Dogecoin confirms transactions every 60 seconds. That’s much faster than Bitcoin, which takes about 10 minutes per block.
- Mining: It uses a mining system called Scrypt. At launch, this meant regular people could mine it with home computers, without needing advanced hardware.
- Supply: There’s no limit. While Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, Dogecoin adds around 5 billion new coins every year. This keeps the price low and stops people from hoarding.
Dogecoin wasn’t designed as an investment or a store of value. It was made to be used, to tip someone online, to donate to something, or just to try out crypto without feeling like you were joining some exclusive club.
But the real magic? That didn’t come from the code. It came from the internet.
Reddit, Tipping, and the Rise of a Meme Economy
When Dogecoin launched, it wasn’t taken seriously by the wider crypto world. But on Reddit, where the Doge meme had already found its spiritual home, it caught fire almost instantly.
The early Dogecoin subreddit was pure chaos, in a good way. No one was talking about charts or tech papers. People were tipping DOGE for jokes, memes, or just being nice. Did you make someone laugh? You tipped them. It was fast, fun, and basically free.
By the end of 2013, Dogecoin was handling more daily transactions than Bitcoin.
It wasn’t just Reddit, either. The community quickly spread to Twitter, Tumblr, and forums, where traditional crypto projects rarely reached. Dogecoin wasn’t just a currency; it was becoming the internet culture’s coin of choice.
Then, in January 2014, that culture pulled off something that no other cryptocurrency had done: it sent an Olympic team to Sochi.
From Jokes to Jamaican Bobsleds
When news broke that the Jamaican bobsled team had qualified for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics but couldn’t afford to go, someone on Reddit joked: “Let’s send them there with Dogecoin.”
What followed was no joke.
In just two days, the Dogecoin community raised over $30,000 worth of DOGE. The story blew up everywhere. CNN, BBC, Forbes, everyone was suddenly talking about a meme coin that was now helping fund athletes.
This wasn’t a one-off. A month later, the community raised $50,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise, who competed with a full Dogecoin wrap on his car at Talladega. Then came another fundraiser: over $30,000 raised to build clean water wells in Kenya with the nonprofit Charity: Water.
Billy Markus stated, “I may have started it, but as a decentralized currency with open source code, it fully belongs to the community.”
The Dogewallet Hack and Developer Burnout
In December 2013, just weeks after the coin launched, disaster struck.
A third-party Dogecoin wallet service, Dogewallet, was hacked. Millions of DOGE were stolen from user wallets. While Palmer and Markus had no ties to the service, they found themselves under fire. Emails flooded in. Panic gripped the subreddit. Some declared Dogecoin dead before it even began.
But the community refused to let it die.
Under a campaign called SaveDogemas, users pooled their own coins to reimburse the victims. It was unprecedented in the crypto space, a grassroots bailout not funded by founders or investors, but by fellow users.
Still, the stress of running a global phenomenon, unpaid and unsupported, was mounting.
Billy Markus, already shy of the spotlight, quietly exited the project in 2014. He sold his DOGE (reportedly for enough to buy a used Honda Civic) and returned to private life. Jackson Palmer stuck around a bit longer, but by 2015, he too had had enough.
He denounced the growing toxicity in the crypto world and bowed out.
Neither had made money. Neither wanted fame. They simply walked away from the coin they created, while it continued to grow without them.
Musk, Memes, and Market Cap Madness
For a few years, Dogecoin stayed in the background. It was still traded, still used for tips, still loved by its core fanbase. But it had become quiet, until 2020.
That’s when Elon Musk started tweeting.
Sometimes it was just the word “Doge.” Other times, it was memes, like the classic Lion King scene with Doge photoshopped into it. But Musk’s influence on markets was no joke. Every time he tweeted, DOGE’s price surged.
By early 2021, Dogecoin had become a cultural juggernaut. It went from trading at less than a penny to over $0.73 at its peak in May 2021. Its market cap crossed $85 billion, briefly making it more valuable than Twitter, Ford, and many major banks.
Reddit was going wild with “to the moon” posts. DOGE was all over CNBC. Robinhood even crashed because so many people were trying to trade it. On TikTok, creators were hyping it like crazy. What started as a joke had suddenly become one of the biggest coins out there.
But in the middle of all that hype, Palmer came back, and he wasn’t celebrating.
Around mid-2021, he posted a sharp tweet thread saying crypto had turned into a playground for the rich. He accused Musk of messing with the market and called the whole space “a hyper-capitalistic, exploitative system.”
Markus, on the other hand, kept it chill. From his @Shibetoshi account, he cracked jokes, stayed active online, and just kept telling people not to gamble money they couldn’t afford to lose.
Neither returned to development. Their creation had long since taken on a life of its own.
The Dogecoin Foundation Returns
After Dogecoin blew up in 2021, it was clear the project needed some structure. What started as a joke now has millions of holders, media attention, and even real businesses accepting it.
So in August 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation came back.
But it wasn’t trying to go full corporate. The idea was simple: keep Dogecoin usable, open, and true to what it was. The new board had familiar community names and even a few big surprises, like Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin joining as an advisor.
The Dogecoin Foundation began working on a roadmap that included:
- Dogecoin Core development is to maintain the blockchain.
- “Dogecoin Trailmap” initiatives to improve transaction efficiency.
- A push for Dogecoin to be used in real-world payments.
While the developers worked on scalability and security, the coin’s adoption quietly expanded.
Dogecoin in the Real World
Despite its origins, Dogecoin today isn’t just a meme; it’s being used.
Major companies now accept DOGE, including:
- Tesla – Accepts Dogecoin for select merchandise.
- AMC Theatres – Allows DOGE payments for tickets and concessions.
- Newegg, airBaltic, and Dallas Mavericks – Among other brands that integrated DOGE through payment processors like BitPay.
Dogecoin is also supported by every major crypto exchange: Binance, Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini. It’s available in mobile wallets, hardware wallets, and is even compatible with MetaMask via wrapped tokens.
DOGE has also carved out a place in charity and community-led initiatives. Nonprofits have accepted it. Animal shelters have run DOGE campaigns. It remains a favorite for tipping content creators online.
As of mid-2025, Dogecoin’s market cap fluctuates between $25–35 billion, depending on market conditions. It remains among the top 10–15 cryptocurrencies by total value and trading volume.
What started as satire has become part of the global financial infrastructure.
The Legacy of a Meme
Palmer and Markus never meant to change anything. They were just mocking the hype. But somehow, their joke outlived a bunch of serious crypto projects.
Dogecoin wasn’t built on hype, or on revolutionary tech, or on promises. It was built on community, humor, and the power of shared internet culture. That’s its greatest strength, and also its lesson to the crypto industry.
In a space often driven by greed, Dogecoin reminds us of what’s possible when you take a step back, laugh a little, and invite everyone in.
It’s not just a coin. It’s not just a meme. It’s a cultural artifact and an accidental revolution.
In a world where money is designed by institutions, controlled by governments, and loaded with formality, Dogecoin offers something radically different: a monetary experiment born out of joy, run by internet strangers, and fueled not by scarcity, but by abundance.
It never tried to be the best. It just tried to be fun. And in doing so, it became one of the most iconic cryptocurrencies in history.
As Billy Markus once said, “Dogecoin is 95% community, 5% code.”
Also Read: Code & Coffee: The Untold Story of Hedera’s Founders
