The cryptocurrency craze continues—this time, for a coin that was created as a joke.
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency named after an Internet meme, hit an all-time high of more than $2 billion in overall value this weekend.
The currency, launched in 2013, was inspired by an online craze for pictures of Shiba Inus, a Japanese dog breed. With people around the world itching to get in on the cryptocurrency trend, the parody coin has been steadily gaining in recent months, hitting $1 billion in overall value in late December, and then doubling to $2 billion on Jan. 7.
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While the market value hit a peak over the weekend, each coin is worth less than two cents, because unlike Bitcoin, there is no limit on the number of Dogecoins that can be produced. According to BBC, there are already 100 billion of the coins in existence. And they’re easy to get your hands on because Dogecoins can be purchased at online exchanges or be mined in the same way as Bitcoins.
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Despite the impressive growth Dogecoin and other altcoins like it have experienced in recent months, some are expressing concern that their rise is driven purely by FOMO, the fear of missing out experienced by investors who missed their chance to get in on the Bitcoin craze before it exploded. Jackson Palmer, the founder of Dogecoin (who has since left the company), told CoinDesk 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 2 years has a $1B+ market cap.”
