What do you need to know about Dogecoin?

Some proponents of Dogecoin or DOGE, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke but is now one of the most popular coins around, would have you believe that the sentence above is all you need to know about Dogecoin. In a way, they'd be right. Dogecoin does not require a lot of thinking.

Who created Dogecoin?

Originally formed as a "joke", Dogecoin was created by IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer. They wanted to create a peer-to-peer digital currency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. In addition, they wanted to distance it from the controversial history of other coins.

Is Dogecoin still a joke?

Dogecoin is no longer a joke. Its popularity has soared — astronomically, this year — buoyed in part by the mainstream adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But Elon Musk is the loudest and most prominent supporter of dogecoin.

Is Dogecoin a Litecoin?

Dogecoin is the funny answer to this trend. Created in December 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, it's a copy of Bitcoin (more precisely, Litecoin, which itself is fairly similar to Bitcoin) that features the Shiba Inu dog and is almost always referred to in silly language that abounds with dog- and moon-related metaphors.