DOGECOIN was created as a joke and an alternative to traditional cryptocurrencies but has become incredibly valuable since 2021.
So who are the minds who turned the idea into a reality?
Meet Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer – the two jokers who are responsible for the meme coin revolution.
Who are Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer?
Dogecoin is older than you think after it was developed in 2013.
Initially, Billy Markus tried his hand with an existing cryptocurrency called ‘Bells’, which was based on the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. His aim was to reach a larger user base than Bitcoin.
But when that didn’t work out, Palmer and Markus teamed up to get Dogecoin off the ground.
Palmer purchased the domain Dogecoin.com, added the coin’s logo and a generic Comic Sans typeface, and then handed everything over to Markus who did the software engineering part of the project.
Before developing Dogecoin, Markus worked at the International Business Machines Corporation (IMB) as a software engineer while Palmer worked at Adobe System in Sydney, Australia as a marketeer.
Speaking in 2018, Palmer said: “It was always like a hobby project, like a side project thing.
“I made a lot of people rich but I didn’t come away with any money. I get to tell people that I created Dogecoin, which is fun.”
Jackson Palmer
Jackson Palmer defines himself as a “marketing” geek.
He currently lives in San Francisco, but is an Australian by birth.
Years before creating Dogecoin, he read extensively about Bitcoin.
This made it possible for him to design a successful project that unites the meme coin and Bitcoin.
Currently, he’s working as a product manager for Dogecoin in Bay Area, San Francisco and uploads videos to his YouTube channel about cryptocurrencies and related topics.
Billy Markus
Markus is a software engineer and is currently the CEO of Dogecoin.
He tweets under the name Shibetoshi Nakamoto, a name alluding to Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2015, he made headlines for selling all of his cryptocurrency for just $10,000
READ MORE ON 24/7 CRYPTO HERE
What are Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer’s net worths?
There are a number of conflicting reports but Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer are rumoured to be worth between $1million and $5million.
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin didn’t gain any traction until the cryptocurrency bubble formed in 2016, where it soared in value.
When the bubble burst in 2018, its price plummeted like the rest of the cryptocurrency market but its value then recovered in 2020, before going on to reach record levels in 2021.
Since Dogecoin’s creation, a number of other meme coins have been founded – most notable Shiba Inu, SafeMoon and versions of the original Dogecoin, such as Dogedash and Dogelon Mars.
AD: If you click on the link below, we may earn affiliate revenue.
You can purchase cryptocurrency from eToro HERE.
The value of meme coins tends to rise and fall spectacularly, but the 2021 boom can be traced back to the GameStop stock price soaring on the back of a subreddit community inflating the store’s stocks.
The group then felt they had been betrayed by rich people manipulating the stock market so they moved to Dogecoin.
Dogecoin was then inflated and taken to new heights thanks to Elon Musk – who tweeted about the coin.
Dogecoin is a copy of Litecoin, which is fairly similar to Bitcoin.
It is a cryptographically protected online network that allows one user to send DOGE to another in a permissionless way. It does work but it isn’t as secure or decentralized as Bitcoin.
Dogecoin at first had very little value.
But that changed in 2021 when Dogecoin became one of the ten biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap — with a total value of more than $50 billion.
Like any other asset, the market assigns DOGE a value based on supply and demand.
