The Sandbox, Avalanche, Cardano, Polkadot, Uniswap…..if these aren’t names you recognize, perhaps you’ll know what they are if we mention the names of better known versions, Bitcoin and Ethereum. These are a few of the 200 cryptocurrencies presently being traded. We’ll spare you the ins and outs of this volatile medium of exchange because frankly, we’re still learning, ourselves. But we couldn’t resist sharing one more digital currency, Dogecoin.

Dogecoin was intended to poke fun at the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. Created by a couple of software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, it was really Palmer who got the ball rolling when he jokingly tweeted in 2013, “Investing in Dogecoins, pretty sure it’s the next big thing.” Leave it to the Twittersphere, but several people took it seriously, retweeted it, and told Palmer (working in Sydney, Australia at the time) to pursue the idea.

Meanwhile in Portland, Oregon, a programmer named Billy Markus had been trying hard to develop his own cryptocurrency, but with little success. Still, when he came across the domain, “dogecoin.com” as being available, he quickly reached out to Jackson, a complete stranger, to show his interest. Long story short, they formed a partnership. They wanted to do something different from the other currencies because who wanted to compete with the monster that was Bitcoin? One of the things the pair did differently was to not limit to the number of coins produced by the system. Dogecoin was also a coin with a personalized blockchain. We could get into its financials, its rise on Reddit, how its market value reached $8 million, and billionaire,
Elon Musk’s interest in dogecoin, but we’re not going to because about now, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with purebred dogs.

Check out the photo below of an actual Dogecoin:

You see it, right? Dogecoin presented itself as a “fun” form of digital currency and used a Shibu Inu as its logo, though we don’t know why this breed.

More understandable is why in August, 2020, an anonymous person (or persons) known as “Ryoshi” created yet another cypto and named it the “Shiba Inu.” Touted as being the “Dogecoin-killer,” it flew under the radar until Elon Musk posted cryptic tweets about the Shiba Inu. To a lot of people, it suggested that Musk was moving his support from Dogecoin to Shiba Inu.

Not to be outdone by the “little dogs,” another digital currency came along, this one called “Akita Inu.”  How long before the other Japanese breeds get in on this? Wait, check this out.

No matter. Dogecoin has the honor of being the first meme coin (a cryptocurrency that was inspired by Internet memes) and and the first “dog coin.”

Investing in cryptocurrency is risky, and we’re the people who struggled with “New Math” in the third grade. Our interest here is purely “for the dogs,” but as a parting thought, you should know that not long ago, a series of nonfungible tokens called “shiboshis” was released.  Shiboshis are “10,000 lovable Shiba Inu generated Non Fungible Tokens (NFTS) eternally written on the Ethereum blockchain.”

Non Fungibles. You’re on your own with that one.

Image: Boxer holding bitcoin by © Photodynamx/Dreamstime stock photo