
Dogecoin now accounts for more transactions than any other cryptocurrency - acangiano
http://bitinfocharts.com
======
lvs
A significant portion of the commenters in this thread are asking why Dogecoin
has any value at all, as if for the first time grappling with the abstraction
of value. Dogecoin has value, like any currency, because a number of people
believe it does. Cryptocurrency will have been worth its short-term weight in
carbon dioxide and money laundering if, at a minimum, it illuminates the minds
of a good number of people to the fundamental arbitrariness of economics and
all the philosophical consequences it entails.

~~~
orblivion
When it all comes crashing down is when they'll be illuminated.

~~~
rch
By giving it value, they illuminate the absence of value in all of it. Think
of it like performance art.

------
maninchaos
A few weeks ago, my mom heard about Bitcoin on the news, gave me a call. She
wanted to mine BTC. When I explained that mining would not be a viable process
considering the inherent difficulty and the age and type of her computer, she
was disappointed. I showed her how to buy Bitcoins, how to make an offline
paper wallet, and she spent a little money and now holds one BTC.

Once Doge popped up, I called my mom and told her she could mine! I set up her
machine, and for a while she was pulling in a few thousand a day. Even with
growing difficulty she's mining a few hundred a day. She's excited, and she's
learned an absolute ton about cryptocurrencies because of Doge. She thinks the
meme is cute, and she's been tipping people on Reddit, and giving away Doge in
"real life" as well.

Bitcoin feels unaccessible to people like my mom. Most of the discussions that
happen in the various Bitcoin communities occurs at a technological level that
limits the kinds of participants involved. Since there are 100 BILLION Doge,
it will always be affordable, joke or not, and with the kind community
developing around it, it allows people like my mom to get involved and to
learn some interesting things that will most likely impact her future.

My mom will hold on to her 1 BTC, sure, but she's _using_ her Doge. She bought
a cool trilobite fossil on the dogemarket subreddit, and is thinking of
putting up her hand knit scarves for sale.

When 60 year old folks who have never been interested in the intersections of
technology and economy start using Reddit and mining and using cryptocurrency,
there is something special happening.

~~~
lucisferre
Thanks this was actually a really fascinating anecdote which gives a pretty
unique perspective on digital crypto-currencies.

------
aarondf
Ok, help me out here: Dogecoin's first block was mined on 2013-12-06 and now
the richest account has $846,935 USD. Is it really that easy?

Could I start an aarondfcoin? Is it all about getting the network effect to
make a non-backed (fiat) currency actually worth something?

I was just so shocked to see that Dogecoin was actually worth _anything_.

~~~
rallison
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that you also need virality.
There are multiple coins released every day [1]. Most of these coins go
nowhere.

Why are so many coins released? Quite simply, most coins are forks of
Bitcoin/Litecoin/etc with minor tweaks. Occasionally, you get a truly new coin
based on something new, but most simply tweak the coins per block, the
difficulty re-targeting rate, the starting difficulty, the block time, etc.
Coingen.io exemplifies how simple this is. Of course, there are exceptions,
such as the upcoming Etherium [2], the first Turing complete cryptocurrency
(as far as I know, at least).

Despite that, most coins basically fail. Sure, they receive hashing power, and
some even get onto exchanges. Most of them, however, don't really go anywhere.

So, yes, it is relatively easy to create and launch a coin. It is a bit harder
to launch a coin that makes it to an exchange. It is harder still to make one
that also sticks around and stays in the public consciousness (such as
dogecoin).

Finally, let's say you have a great idea for a new coin. The way some people
previously got rich by creating a new coin was to premine the coin. Basically,
one would mine the first x number of blocks, before releasing it. This still
happens, but is now much more often frowned upon. So, to get rich off of
creating a coin, you basically would need to premine a coin, and convince
others that you had a good reason to premine it [3]. This absolutely still
happens, but is becoming tougher to pull off.

So yes, you could create aarondfcoin. Yes, you could probably release it and
get hashing power thrown at it. But, would you make money doing so? Well, that
requires a bit more effort. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of attempted
alt currencies for every dogecoin success.

That said, yes, there is still room for success here, but it usually requires
more than just creating aarondfcoin. The virality aspect is the more important
aspect, at the moment.

[1] See the bitcointalk announcement forum
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0)

[2] [http://ethereum.org/](http://ethereum.org/) and the whitepaper:
[http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html](http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html)

[3] Yes, there are a still a number of ways to make money off of releasing a
coin that doesn't involve premining (or appears not to involve premining), but
that is a topic worthy of its own thread.

~~~
sireat
What is funny about premining critique for the altcoins is that Bitcoin is the
most egregious example of premining, Satoshi in effect having premined 5 to 10
% of current coins. Sure, you may say at the time there was no choice but to
keep hashing until others joined the party. Still the end effect is still the
same - a large amount of BTC is controlled by an unknown entity.

Litecoin apparently was one of few altcoins to avoid premining that is
everyone (who followed BTC forums that is) got off on equal footing.

~~~
dasil003
> _What is funny about premining critique..._

To me the funny thing is there is enough consternation over this to have an
official term for it.

Satoshi, whether a group or individual, invented Bitcoin and planted the seeds
for its success against all odds. Now that it's huge everyone is regretting
not getting in early, but I see no reason why the creators and early adopters
don't deserve their spoils.

It's nice that Litecoin decided to start everyone on equal footing, but let's
not fool ourselves: that's an adoption tactic not altruism. At the end of the
day Litecoin is the most successful of the copycat digital currencies but it's
still a copycat.

------
qznc
Dogecoin is kind of the Redditcoin [0]. This might be one reason, why it is so
heavily used. For reddit users, it probably easier to get started with doge
than with bitcoin. Since it is seen as fun, (micro) transactions are casually
thrown around [1].

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogetipbot/wiki/gettingstarted](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogetipbot/wiki/gettingstarted)

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1v8x3v/recently_st...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1v8x3v/recently_struck_rich_mining_set_up_this_account/)

~~~
gizzlon
Cool.. Is there a service that let's me tip email addresses, twitter users
etc? (Without registration first..)

~~~
James_Duval
Twitter - yes at least one
[https://twitter.com/tipdoge](https://twitter.com/tipdoge), Email - I've seen
rumblings, but not now I think.

------
uniclaude
This is an absolutely unfounded assumption but one could think a large part of
those transactions might be some sort of tips. I can confess I'm happy to have
some supply of a very cheap currency that I can give to people for fun. I have
no use for DOGE other than this, but my friends and I are enjoying it.

Pollution created through the mining of relatively worthless items can be an
issue though.

~~~
dangero
This is absolutely the source of the transactions. When you consider that no
other crypto currency has a mass appeal use at this point, it makes sense that
the transactions would be higher for DOGE than any other. Conversely, The
primary use of Bitcoin is value storage.

~~~
Blahah
An alternative source of the transactions is dust (people sending tiny
transactions as a way to increase the size of the blockchain - an attack on
the currency).

See
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tc7ul/serious_shi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tc7ul/serious_shibes_we_have_a_dust_problem/)

~~~
dangero
[https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/pull/52](https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/pull/52)

That was fixed.

------
untog
To everyone that dismisses this as a joke currency - how is it different from
bitcoin?

~~~
pakitan
How is Dogebook different than Facebook? I mean you can create an account in
both, follow your friends, "like" stuff...etc. They are essentially the same
so they must both be worth billions, right?

What makes bitcoin different is the network effect and the infrastructure -
there are many people who think bitcoin is _the_ cryptocurrency and this is a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Some day another cryptocurrency may overtake it but
for now it's the one because people say it's the one.

~~~
girvo
Oh my god. I'm going to make Dogebook

~~~
raelshark
I think Facebook already is mostly Dogebook.

------
Blahah
I think the transaction volume comes partly from Reddit tipping with tipbots
(a beautiful aspect of the modern age).

But it's probably more from from the fact that some people are attacking the
currency by sending massive volumes of micro-transactions. Many people have
been receiving thousands of really tiny donations (off-reddit).

~~~
phy6
The 'dust' issue was resolved recently by changing the minimum transaction
amount. AFAIK, this vulnerability affects many other alt coins that haven't
had the masses of people looking at their implementations.

------
tarlyn
This is transactional volume, and although of course the transactions are
pretty small keep in mind that the total transactions over the last 24h was
$13 million which is still pretty impressive. (Bitcoin was $500m) -
[http://bitinfocharts.com/](http://bitinfocharts.com/)

------
oskarth
I don't understand. Who is buying and selling Dogecoins? For what? Mining for
fun is one thing, but why buy it with USD?

~~~
dangero
People tip other people Dogecoins on sites like Reddit. That's its main use
and that's why there are so many transactions. Since the coin has a total
supply of 100 billion coins vs 21 million for Bitcoin, you can easily tip
someone 100 Dogecoins without it really costing you much, but you can't do
that with Bitcoin for obvious reasons.

~~~
rthomas6
This sort of thinking is natural but incorrect since cryptocurrencies are
divisible to many decimal places. It's just as easy to tip BTC, but tipping
.00001 Bitcoins doesn't feel the same as tipping 100 Dogecoins, even though
it's just as easy and exactly the same. It's just another one of those things
that matters for adoption that nerds would never consider.

~~~
dangero
I'm not sure what you are describing as incorrect. Tipping 100 Bitcoins would
cost nearly $100,000. Yes, you can tip the same value in Bitcoins, but tipping
a decimal amount is not fun since everyone is conditioned to local currency
value that generally goes to 2 decimal places at most. Nerds are considering
this. There is a big movement in bitcoin to denominate coins in millibitcoins
or microbitcoins.

~~~
rthomas6
>tipping a decimal amount is not fun since everyone is conditioned to local
currency value that generally goes to 2 decimal places at most.

That's all I meant. :)

------
davidw
What the Doge's coins actually looked like:

[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monete_di_Venezia](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monete_di_Venezia)

------
gdeglin
The reason for the large number of transactions is that so many people are
mining Dogecoin. Most miners automatically sell their mined Dogecoin for
Bitcoin, and new Dogecoin blocks are mined roughly every 60 seconds.

Several pools have as many as 6000+ individuals currently mining it. Really
the only thing preventing the transaction number from being even higher is
that most pools only give out accumulated awards to their members every 30
minutes or so (during which the pool may have mined several blocks).

------
plaxis
But the supply is 28,310,185,834 DOGE.

~~~
oinksoft
I'm pretty happy to be alive in 2014 to see things like

    
    
       But the supply is 28,310,185,834 DOGE.

------
ulam2
Much progress, WoW!

~~~
testrun
so doge

~~~
alexeisadeski3
such currency

~~~
wanda
very wealth

------
Cthulhu_
IDK, there was an alarming comment on the doge community page that this
particular system would soon have a block chain that would be too large to
contain on anyone's computer if the transaction volume keeps up. Could be
someone (or many people) just spamming transactions for the lulz to make
dogecoin unfeasible to keep.

------
taproot
Its like silver vs gold. The volume for silver is much higher as its price
range is a lot more manageable for people. I also wouldnt be suprised if just
one person created the majority of these to push hype. Theyre all a bunch of
ponzi schemes. Sadly i also think theyre here to stay for at least a long
while.

~~~
girvo
Christ I'm sick of people describing these as Ponzi schemes. It displays a
distinct lack of economic (and modern history) knowledge. Especially when the
intent matters.

~~~
lmm
Go on then: it pays out a lot to early "investors". It can only maintain this
rate of return as long as adoption is increasing. Why is it not a Ponzi
scheme?

~~~
andrewla
Why don't we just agree that it is legitimate to call it a scam (leaving the
question of whether it is a scam out of the issue). I know that this is
devolving into a semantic argument, but it clearly isn't a Ponzi scheme, as a
particular type of scam.

A Ponzi scheme is an investment that represents account balances that are
satisfied from a cash pool that only grows from new investors, and provides
fictitious returns on the balances.

This really is quite a simple scheme, but alarmingly effective, because as
long as people trust that the account balance is legitimate, and the returns
are good, people will not exit the scheme. Sometimes, as (apparently) in Mr.
Ponzi's case, this emerges not through an attempt to steal money, but in an
attempt to buy time to recover from trading losses.

Do we disagree on the definition of Ponzi scheme here? If we agree on the
definition, then I don't see any way that you can claim
bitcoin/dogecoin/litecoin is a Ponzi scheme -- there are no account balances
(in anything but the coin itself), there's no promised return, there's no cash
fund that is satisfying investors making exits (unless there's a massive
conspiracy of exchanges).

Maybe you can switch to comparing cryptocurrencies to pump-and-dump schemes?
Or just call it a scam, an attempt by the creators to create wealth out of
thin air by preying on the gullibility of libertarians.

~~~
lmm
You're right that there's no explicit account balance. Words are imperfect;
ultimately bitcoin is a new type of scam. But I want a term that emphasises
the disproportionate returns given to the early "investors" \- an ordinary
stock pump-and-dump doesn't have bitcoin's built-in deflation. I think a Ponzi
scheme is the closest fit.

------
calcsam
Any reasonable measure of transaction volume should be measured in a stable
currency like dollars...and BTC is the leader, far and away here...

~~~
woah
how about percentage? Bitcoin 5%, Dogecoin 110%

~~~
hbbio
Percentage of what? Since there _is_ a relative value between
cryptocurrencies, counting volume without taking in account value is
meaningless.

I understand Dogecoin has a use (Reddit) and could be a great investment in
the future, but currently, it represents only a tiny fraction of what Bitcoin,
or Litecoin are.

------
cantbecool
Dogecoin is going to be the defacto way to give kudos to someone on the
internet, i.e., Doge Tip Bot on reddit/twitter. I think with that in mind,
Doge is going to expose millions of people to cryptocurrency and actually give
them the ability to own at least a few, unlike Bitcoin.

------
ck2
The real test for dogecoin is when the reward cuts in half next month, and
then half again two months after that.

We'll see who is mining come May. If they still are, then it won.

------
jbb555
The difference is that bitcoin will likely be considerable more useful next
month and next year and dogecoin will be a joke you can read about on the
internet.

~~~
jff
"but, but, I've hitched my cart to _that_ horse!"

------
wosos
so transaction

------
poorelise
OK, so where can I best buy some Dogecoin with BTC?

~~~
boyter
bter.com works pretty well in my personal experience.

Otherwise look at the sidebar at
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/)
Dogecoin market/exchange for a list of exchanges.

~~~
poorelise
Thanks, I successfully bought some via bter

