Parody cryptocurrency Dogecoin increases to $2B in market value; boom worries founder

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Dogecoin started out as a parody of then-struggling cryptocurrency Bitcoin. However, it has made serious gains recently, despite its technology left without an update for the past two years.

The cryptocurrency was launched in 2013 and was based on the meme of a shiba inu now known as doge.

BBC reported that its value had been rising over December and that in the last weekend, the market value nearly doubled and rose to more than $2 billion. As of writing, it is valued at $1.7 billion on CoinMarket Cap.

One dogecoin is at its peak of $0.015.

The rise in value comes as a surprise as the digital currency was stagnant for years until it started to increase in May 2017, reports Coindesk.

While it trails behind bitcoin, which leads at $254 billion, founder Jackson Palmer, who left the company in 2015, is worried about its boom.

“The fact that most conversations happening in the media and between peers focus on the investment potential is worrying, as it draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based,” he told CoinDesk.

“I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn’t released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap.”

However, dogecoin developers are excited about the rising value. “To me, this proves that we don’t need shiny features or a ton of innovation and even with a conservative—and in my own case completely distracted—development team for a boom,” developer Patrick Lodder told CoinDesk.

BBC also notes that the reason dogecoin has a smaller value than bitcoin is because no limit has been set on mining the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin rules state that only 21 million bitcoins can be created. So far, 100 billion dogecoins exist.

In an interview with BBC, Prof. Ethan Ilzetzki at the London School of Economics said he believes that cryptocurrencies don’t have “long-term value.”

“They’re worth a lot because people say they’re worth a lot,” he stated.

“A digital unit of currency has no intrinsic value unless it can be used in transactions, and I cannot name a single cryptocurrency that is more useful in transactions than a credit card that’s denominated in dollars or pounds or yen.” Niña V. Guno /ra

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