Introduction to DogeCoin
DogeCoin
An internet currency, cryptographically locked and copied across a network of computers. You can use it online, or in local stores that use apps to convert it to dollars.
It uses the face of Kabosu, a shiba inu from Japan. Her owner keeps a blog with many pictures. See also the Doge meme.
To send your coins to someone else, you sign a transaction with your secret key and their public key, and send it to the network.
The network is made up of a bunch of computers doing some roughly-timed mathematical processing to combine blocks of transactions once every minute.
Your wallet, which stores your secret keys, refers to these transactions to know how much you have left.
Market
The market is always changing, so the raw numbers aren't entirely correct:
- Bitcoin: $7,500 million
- Litecoin: $450 million
- DogeCoin: $50 million
- All other 170+ mineable cryptographic currencies: $400 Million
- (This kind of market has the so-called "long tail" property.)
There's a lot of speculative investment, so the value shifts from day to day. If something happens to frighten the poor investors, they might sell everything and halve the value temporarily. This will become fairly stable only when the majority of the currency is held and traded by consumers.
Mining
A new currency needs a distribution system. DogeCoin mints new coins on each block, and awards them to the miners processing the blockchain. All the coins from a block goes to one lucky miner, but your chances are proportional to the amount of work you do. Mining in large pools lets you split a more stable payout with other miners.
Mining is done by performing billions of hashes until a small enough resulting number is found. The difficulty is adjusted regularly so that blocks usually take one minute to find, even if the total hashrate changes.
No one body should control over 30% of the hashing rate, or they have a chance at being able to influence the network for their own gain. Make sure to join smaller pools.
Getting Doge
DogeCoin is a currency. You can buy it at exchanges, like Vault of Satoshi, or find someone else selling it face-to-face locally.
In the future, Banks may start exchanging DogeCoin.
You can buy Bitcoin, which is still more common, and then exchange that for DogeCoin at an exchange like Vault of Satoshi or Cryptsy. It's very easy to buy locally, so you can get around time-consuming online payment verification.
By working on the blockchain, you can receive a share of newly-minted coins and transaction fees.
You can receive a few for free at a 'faucet' site, or by getting some as a gift from friends, or by someone online who likes a comment you post.
Buying with Doge
More and more merchants are accepting DogeCoin for their products and services.
Buy gift cards with DogeCoin at treats.io
Various small vendors. Burgers, doughnuts, or pizza!
As DogeCoin becomes well-known, more places will accept it. If you're buying things from friends or small businesses, ask if they accept DogeCoin.
It's also very easy to use an exchange to trade your DogeCoin to Bitcoin to buy things from stores that aren't yet accepting DogeCoin.
Tipping
One of the great joys of DogeCoin is the availability of tipping bots that let us give small amounts to our friends or to people who earn our goodwill.
Twitter - @tipdoge
Reddit - /r/dogetipbot
Fidotip SMS - 1-587-316-DOGE
Facebook - Coming soon?
Paper Wallets - You can create new secret keys, load up their addresses with money, and give them away.
Tipping relies on leaving money with a third party, so make sure not to store too much in any one service.
Charity
On Christmas day, a large online DogeCoin wallet was hacked, and millions of DogeCoin were stolen. Members of the community launched Save Dogemas, which aims to reimburse those who lost their fortunes.
In the run-up to the winter olympics, the Jamaican bobsleigh team was strapped for cash and couldn't participate unless they could afford to get there. They started a fundraiser, and most of the donations came in the form of DogeCoins from our own community drive.
A charity called Doges for Kids raised enough DogeCoin to train service doges for kids with disabilities!
There are many personal charitable projects, as well.
Future
DogeCoin is approachable and fun, which makes it perhaps the best candidate to become the Internet currency of the majority. All sorts of services are popping up to support the coins' use across the world.
The entire cryptocurrency market is in the early stages, and will be prone to fluctuations due to speculation. By 2016, there should be enough of a userbase that the exchange rates will become fairly stable.
Eventually, governments will get their asses in gear and help investors of cryptocurrencies claim Capital Gains so they can pay their taxes. Until then, these coins will always seem kind of shady to certain types of people.
