
Dogecoin just broke $2B - Corrado
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/a-parody-cryptocurrency-just-broke-2-billion-for-its-market-cap.html
======
soneca
When I found out about Bitcoin, I wanted to try some cryptocurrency to see
what it was in practice, how it would work. Dogecoin was perfect for this
learning purpose. I mined a little, bought about USD5 of it. Gave some tips on
Reddit.

I liked the explicit purpose of the community to _not_ be a speculative
instrument. You should always use it as currency and most users were against
holding it as wealth. I guess they lost that battle to the speculative greedy
forces.

Once I learned enough, I stopped playing with it and forgot about some coins
left in my wallet. That ~USD5 is worth ~USD430 today. But I forgot about the
coins _and_ the password. :) So, no profit from my early playing time.

~~~
mcv
> I liked the explicit purpose of the community to not be a speculative
> instrument. You should always use it as currency and most users were against
> holding it as wealth. I guess they lost that battle to the speculative
> greedy forces.

Every coin lost that battle. Bitcoin was also intended as currency. At the
moment, the amount of speculation far outstrips any legitimate use as
currency.

The world has gone nuts. And what's worse, my co-workers talk all day about
what Redcoin and Ripple and Verge are doing and whether they bought or sold at
the wrong moment.

~~~
beojan
> Every coin lost that battle. Bitcoin was also intended as currency. At the
> moment, the amount of speculation far outstrips any legitimate use as
> currency.

We're seeing the reason economists consider deflation to be a bad thing.

~~~
Klathmon
It has nothing to do with deflation (bitcoin isn't even deflationary yet, it
is still inflationary currently), it has everything to do with scaling the
blockchain as a technology.

Bitcoin was the first to hit the point of big adoption, and it will need to
solve the problem. Ethereum is starting to feel the problem now as well.

~~~
beojan
The price of goods (using USD as a proxy for goods, which is fine so long as
you account for inflation of USD) in bitcoin is generally speaking decreasing.
This means bitcoin is deflationary (despite new bitcoin still being mined).

~~~
adventured
Currently Bitcoin is neither inflationary nor deflationary.

It's a near zero swap (mostly other than fees). Nothing is created nor
destroyed, which is why the primary argument for Bitcoin having much value
today is as a value store.

You want to sell $1 million in bitcoin. Someone else is willing to pay you $1
million USD for those bitcoins. $1 million neither left nor was added to the
economy. You now have the $1m USD to spend or invest as you see fit. You
swapped positions, that's it. No deflation occurred at all.

~~~
beojan
I can buy more of whatever good I want for 1 bitcoin today than I could a
couple of months ago, and I could buy more then than at the beginning of last
year. That means bitcoin is deflating.

------
Joeboy
See also [https://uetoken.com/](https://uetoken.com/)

Named "Useless Ethereum Token", marketed with the strapline "seriously, don't
buy these tokens", sold $353,180 worth of tokens.

~~~
VMG
How do we know these aren't wash trades?

~~~
Agebor
Why bother if you have a mixer:
[https://www.privcoin.io/ethereum/](https://www.privcoin.io/ethereum/)

~~~
VMG
To inflate success metrics

------
_1
Serious question... how does ${Price of 1 coin} * ${Total supply of coins} =
${Market cap}? Not all coins are going to sell for the peak price ... it seems
like a moot metric at best.

~~~
deadbunny
The same way ${price of stock} * ${total supply of stocks} = ${market cap}

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
The classical wisdom is ${price of stock} is at least somewhat correlated with
${price of company assets} + some speculative modifier for future performance.
The cryptocoins only have the latter.

~~~
jerf
We can also see there is a real sense in which market cap matters. There are
many cases where companies acquire other companies that are publicly traded in
one shot. When that happens, the offer is generally somewhere in the ballpark
of the market cap. If someone wanted to acquire "all BitCoin", there isn't an
equivalent way to use the "market cap" of BitCoin to mean anything.

(If you want to observe that value is thus still relative and that the people
making the offer are themselves influenced by the market cap, go nuts.
However, if you intend "valuations are relative anyhow" as a selective attack
on the realness of stock market caps but then "accidentally" forget to apply
the same logic to cryptocurrency market caps, I'll pass.)

------
Corrado
So, if I weren't sure that cryptocurrency was in a bubble before, I think it's
safe to say that when DogeCoin pops a $2B market cap _something_ big is
happening. And that big thing is probably not good.

~~~
lmm
Dogecoin isn't really a parody, not in the way that e.g. Useless Ether Token
is a parody. It's a relatively lighthearted, fun cryptocurrency, but it's at
least as legitimate as e.g. Litecoin, and the only way to see it as less
legitimate than Bitcoin is if you see something magical about the fact that
Bitcoin was first.

~~~
mywittyname
So you're saying we should wait and see how CosbyCoins do before calling this
a bubble?

~~~
lmm
Dogecoin reaching a certain market cap shouldn't move the needle on that view
one way or another, IMO.

(Personally I believe most cryptocurrencies represent a bubble, doubly so for
Ether tokens. Not Doge though, that's going to the moon)

------
neals
I bought a couple million dodge back in the day. Tipped my fellow Redditors
half of that. I should go find that wallet.

~~~
Corrado
I actually have a physical DogeCoin somewhere. A marketing firm had some made
up (they look like casino chips) for fun and gave me one.

Now, I just have to find a machine to put it in.

------
asar
Dogecoin started as a currency to tip users in forums and other message
boards, like Bitcoin. Right now though it actually offers a lot:

\- lower transaction fee's than most other coins, faster processing

\- high volume, so it's cheaper to shift from Coin A to DOGE and transfer,
than say LTC, ETH or BTC

\- it's a pair to trade small cap coins against, which BTC currently fails to
do, as the smallest BTC unit 1 Satoshi is $0.0001459864 as of today

I personally have never bought it, but it's more than a meme right now.

------
leoc
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/7oxi53/developer_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/7oxi53/developer_brain_dump_incoming/)
contains a response from the current Dogecoin devs, or at least one of them:

> I feel some are using our rise to illustrate the absurdity of cryptocurrency
> pricing ([http://uk.businessinsider.com/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-has-
> ma...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-has-market-cap-
> above-2-billion-2018-1) for example). To me, in an environment where a
> cryptoasset with $30 USD equivalent transaction fees has a market cap of
> over a quarter of trillion dollars, I don't think we're the absurd one. Yes
> we take ourselves less seriously, but that doesn't mean we're not serious
> behind the scenes. We're a 4 year old currency with transaction fees barely
> over a cent and significantly higher throughput than most other
> cryptocurrencies.

(Disclaimer: I know him personally.)

------
slitaz
If someone puts a sell for a million of those dogecoins, it would send the
price down to under 1 cent per dogecoin (current price).

~~~
knownothing
Is that different than how stocks work?

~~~
lmm
Stocks - at least, blue-chip stocks - are usually thickly traded. The full set
of shares outstanding does get bought and sold, at prices that usually remain
roughly reflective of the market price (e.g. Dell being taken private, for a
recent example). There are stocks that trade much more thinly, and this kind
of absurdity can happen there, e.g. Bigfoot Project:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-18/bigfoot-r...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-18/bigfoot-
riches-and-bank-activism) .

So there's no clear bright line between "legitimate market cap" and "silly
market cap". But there is a quantitative difference, and it's worth thinking
about how deep the order book is when you see these "market cap" calculations
being thrown arond.

------
andreasklinger
In a world where there is a coin (literally) named shitcoin[1] how can be
dogecoin considered a parody? At least they used it for fundraisers?

[1]:
[https://www.coinexchange.io/market/SHIT/BTC](https://www.coinexchange.io/market/SHIT/BTC)

------
thisisit
Cryptocurrency supporters like to say HN hates bitcoin etc. but for some
reason "price point" stories keep getting voted up. I still don't get the
fascination with price point stories. Do we need to post Google or Apple price
points next time they break a marketcap?

That said yesterday's story about Dogecoin breaking $1B:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16090463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16090463)

Edit1: And Dentacoin also crossed $2 billion in marketcap:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dentacoin/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dentacoin/)

Edit2: Oops it is down to $1.6 billion.

------
petra
Is there anyone that became rich by invest in dogecoin ? Or nobody predicted
this ?

~~~
3chelon
Not exactly rich, but I mined a couple of million of them back in 2013-2014.
Still have a million left (the rest were stolen by Paul Vernon in the Cryptsy
heist). Probably cost me around a thousand pounds in electricity and hardware
costs, before I decided it was no longer worth it as all the altcoins
plummeted in value. I held onto them for years because it didn't seem worth
selling them for nothing. Obviously, I'm now happy I did.

~~~
Corrado
Can you realistically turn those coins into cash now? What would happen if you
tried to trade them for €?

------
vinchuco
to me, this [1] is an indication that it's more likely due to the recent
cryptocurrency speculation hype than actual user adoption

[1]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dogecoin,doge](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dogecoin,doge)

------
grinsekatze
So tired of reading about cryptocurrencies.

“Is this gonna be forever? Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh”

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
So stop reading about them?

------
kernelkadafi
I seen on an exchange people were using doge to move funds as other
coins/tokens were more expensive or disabled, it's not a sign of a bubble but
of it actually being used

