The history of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke on Reddit years ago and recently surged 600% in a Wall Street Bets copycat rally - Yahoo News

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Dogecoin Piotr Swat/Shutterstock.com

• Dogecoin has come into the spotlight once more as buyers, including Reddit users, push the cryptocurrency up 600%.

• Reddit users have largely contributed to the digital currency's success on multiple occasions since it was created seven years ago.

• In 2013, what started as a joke between two engineers gained popularity quickly, even briefly eclipsing Bitcoin.

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The digital currency based on a meme - Dogecoin - has captured public attention once more as its stock surged over 600% in the last 24 hours, driven by the Reddit mania surrounding GameStop.

Dogecoin's recent popularity is not the first time the unusual digital currency has captured the spotlight.

Dogecoin started in 2013 as a joke between two engineers. IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer had never even met when they successfully combined two of 2013's greatest phenomena: Bitcoin, and "doge." The result: Dogecoin.

Dogecoin was a product that people started using as soon as it was released, much to the two engineers' surprise. Over a million unique visitors went to dogecoin.com within the website's first month.

The doge meme that gained popularity in 2013 featured an image of a Shiba Inu dog with Comic Sans thought bubbles spouting out of it with near monosyllabic ideas. The meme could be used to express anything from jokes about naps, early mornings, diets -- even space exploration.

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Before the product was released, Palmer, who'd been following developments in the cryptocurrency world, absentmindedly tweeted, "Investing in Dogecoin, pretty sure it's the next big thing."

Read more: 4 heavyweight investing firms answer the 5 most burning bitcoin questions facing investors as the cryptocurrency sees unprecedented volatility

He got some replies encouraging him to pursue the idea, and a week later bought the domain Dogecoin.com. Inevitably, the idea got picked up on reddit, a hotbed of doge activity in 2013.

Meanwhile, in Portland, Billy Markus had been trying to program his own digital currency that would appeal to a broader demographic than the profiteers who've flooded into Bitcoin since the currency was released in 2008. But the project had gone nowhere. Then he stumbled across Dogecoin.com within a day or two of the site going live.

"The first thing I said was, 'This is so funny.' Then I said, 'I should just make this coin,'" Markus told Insider back in 2013.

Markus tweeted at Palmer saying he wanted to go in on the venture, and before Palmer even responded, started reconfiguring Bitcoin's source code, which was publicly available, to turn its user-facing elements into the doge meme.

Eventually Palmer wrote back, and the partnership was formed. A little more than a week after Palmer's joke tweet, Dogecoin was launched in December of 2013.

The currency was derived from the open source software project, Litecoin. Unlike Bitcoin. Dogecoin does not have a limit to the number of coins that can be produced in the system.

Redditors helped Dogecoin develop its own subculture in 2013

The digital currency instantly exploded on Reddit, generating a market value of $8 million at the time. It became popular for the internet practice of "tipping," which was a way of repaying people on the web for performing "good deeds," like sharing an idea or making a platform more accessible.

Only about a week after launching, Dogecoin became the second-most-tipped currency, the engineers told Insider.

The digital currency has long contributed to a culture that distinguishes itself by a sort of irreverence for institutions like Wall Street. It's not surprising Reddit users would take up the stock alongside GameStop and AMC in trading against big hedge funds.

Dogecoin developed its own culture of sorts in 2013, largely due to the currency having a lower barrier of entry than Bitcoin for people who might be interested in cryptocurrencies.

See also: Some GameStop store employees are getting investing questions and criticism from customers over the company's volatile stock and they're in the dark about how to handle it

"It's not taking itself as seriously, it's not being used by people worrying about whether they'll become rich," Palmer told Insider in 2013. "It's something to share for thanks or kudos."

At the time, the engineers said they had no plans to compete with cryptocurrency giant Bitcoin, but in 2014 the trading volume of the meme-worthy coin briefly eclipsed Bitcoin and all other digital currencies.

A year later, Palmer took an "extended leave of absence" from the company as he said the cryptocurrency environment had grown increasingly serious and "toxic."

In 2017, the currency crossed a new milestone - $2 billion market value.

Redditors focus on Dogecoin once again

Dogecoin hit a market value of about $9 billion Friday, becoming ranked as one of the top 10 digital currencies.

The digital coin's rally, much like GameStop's rally that was in part driven by Reddit users from WallStreetBets, has been fueled by the subreddit SatoshiStreetBets, where users planned to send the currency "to the moon" - or at least to their goal of $1 per coin.

Dogecoin saw similar efforts in July when an unsuccessful TikTok trend called for forcing the coin to equal a US dollar. Redditors have a long way to go before the coin's price is equivalent to a dollar; since Dogecoin jumped Friday the coin is currently worth about $0.0779.

After Dogecoin stocks surged with other volatile stocks like GameStop and AMC, Robinhood temporarily restricted crypto trading Friday, as Bitcoin rose with Dogecoin.

Public figures have also gotten in on the action, promoting the currency. Thursday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has referred to Dogecoin as his favorite currency, tweeted about the market moves using a mock Vogue cover, dubbed "Dogue."

Rob Wile contributed earlier reporting to this article.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 02:17AM
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The history of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke on Reddit years ago and recently surged 600% in a Wall Street Bets copycat rally - Yahoo News

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Funny, heartwarming or serious: Will Super Bowl ads be super boring this year as brands skirt controversy? - Chicago Tribune

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Chief Creative Director Jac Mansour, from left, President and CEO Michael Magnusson and Lisa Berg, executive producer and studio manager, meet with their team Jan. 28, 2021, at their office in Schaumburg. For the eighth year, Schaumburg-based Pinnacle Advertising will be behind the ads for Bolingbrook-based WeatherTech commercials during the Super Bowl. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 04:32AM
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Funny, heartwarming or serious: Will Super Bowl ads be super boring this year as brands skirt controversy? - Chicago Tribune

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Funny or Die CEO Mike Farah Remembers Standard Hotel as "Quintessential Hollywood" - Hollywood Reporter

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The hotel, which closed on Jan. 22, was "a creative community of like-minded dreamers" when the entertainment exec worked there in the early 2000s as a food expeditor.

I’m currently the CEO of Funny Or Die. I’ve been a development executive at a company with a deal at Paramount, and an assistant on a motion-picture lit desk at UTA.

But the hardest I’ve ever had to work to get a job was to be a food expeditor at the Standard Hotel [which closed on Jan. 22, 2021].

Three grueling rounds of interviews. A critical recommendation from a dude I met who called himself "Kowboi," which was honestly the only way I got my foot in the door. And all of that not to be a waiter or a busboy or even one of the chosen few who hung out in a glass box in their underwear all day. Nope, as the food expeditor. I was just the guy who brought people their food. That was it.

But I was 23. I’d just arrived in Los Angeles from Michigan and pretty much the only person I knew in town thought "Cowboy" was spelled with a K and an I. I was thrilled to get that job. And when I finally started work, I was not disappointed.

It was 2002, and the Standard was at the peak of its powers. On weekends, you could feel the electricity spilling off the Sunset strip and through the hotel’s big glass doors. There were beautiful people barely clothed everywhere. They’d party all night in the dark club with purple lighting everyone called “the lounge”; start their days with Bloody Marys in the mid-century diner; and move on to mojitos by the dazzling pool. A DJ was constantly spinning records next to the front desk, not far from the always dozing "box girls." It all felt so new, so bold, so daring.

To a Midwesterner like me, aspiring to be a part of the mysterious world of entertainment, it wasn’t just quintessential L.A. — it was quintessential Hollywood. Virtually everyone who worked at The Standard was an aspiring something from somewhere far away. The valet from Iowa wanted to be an actor. The waiter from Minnesota wanted to be a musician. The waitress from Colorado wanted to be a dancer. And everyone — everyone — had a script. We were an entire old-fashioned studio of creatives without jobs, or at least without the jobs we really dreamed of.

But our gigs at The Standard were the next best thing. Stars came and hung out just like the rest of us. Anthony Kiedis would order deconstructed salads with literally everything on the side. Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz would arrive for lunch and leave out the back to avoid paparazzi. Calling George (Clooney), Mark (Wahlberg) and Leo (DiCaprio) always by their first names, like we were all good friends.

And it wasn’t only about the stars. At The Standard, the entire hidden machinery of the entertainment business was cracked open and spilled out for everyone to see. Celebrities would drink by the pool, but so would assistants. Todd Phillips and Scot Armstrong would write in the diner every day — maybe they were coming up with the next Old School?

I remember spotting my very first bound CAA script with its bold red cover and the CAA logo in white, resting on a pool chair. No one was watching, so I took a peek at the cover. Batman vs. Superman?? Holy shit! Maybe this was Ben Affleck’s copy!? Or maybe it was his assistant’s!? Whatever it was, I had to get Philip Seymour Hoffman his Cubano.

The magic was so close, we could literally touch it — we just needed to figure out how to be a part of it. And The Standard helped with that too. This was long before you could just point your phone, shoot something, and post it on TikTok. Aspiring creatives needed resources back then, and The Standard let us shoot there, use its offices for casting so we could seem mildly credible and even hold fundraisers for our projects in the lounge, all for free.

I produced my first short there — Kowboi directed — and during the middle of our hectic, incredibly DIY overnight shoot, the accomplished actor Lili Taylor saw us and said it looked like a very professional production. I introduced my director by his legal name, which was Shawn.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like all of us, or even most of us, made it. A shockwave jolted the entire staff when it was rumored that Bokeem Woodbine — Bokeem Woodbine! — "liked" a script written by a guy in security. All these years later, I fear the Woodbine script may still be stuck in development. Sure, some of my colleagues went on to work in entertainment, including the very talented filmmaker Victoria Mahoney. But a lot of others ended up getting jobs in the real world, and some ended up leaving L.A. altogether. As for Kowboi, he’s currently moving to Chicago to do lighting design for a video game.

At the end of the day, though, our experiences there were never really about achieving a strict definition of entertainment success. It was about forming a creative community of like-minded dreamers who could share a journey together, support each other during exciting but confusing times, and help guide each other on to the next, even bigger, probably-not-nearly-as-fun phase of life — in whatever field we ultimately chose. Not dissimilar to the ethos we worked to establish in the first days of Funny Or Die.

As institutions like The Standard fade away, and as other Hollywood restaurants and hotels suffer during the pandemic, I wonder if we’re losing something we can’t get back. Not just a slice of history or even a source of badly needed employment — but a thriving community of strivers and believers, of people who help each other and help make this city, and this business, special, even magical.

I can only hope that, as the world changes, places like The Standard remain to give hard-working, incredibly naïve aspirers like me a shot — even if it’s just bringing food to someone’s table.

Mike Farah is CEO of Funny Or Die. His brother, Chris, is a writer based in Los Angeles. They hail from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Link Lonk


January 29, 2021 at 11:58PM
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Funny or Die CEO Mike Farah Remembers Standard Hotel as "Quintessential Hollywood" - Hollywood Reporter

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Everything’s a Joke Until It’s Not - The New York Times

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On its face, Reddit is a huge collection of forums overseen by a single private company. It inhabits a gray zone between small, intimate communities with shared expectations and norms and the mega-platforms that tend to obliterate such things. Its business is to let people gather for free, generating communities and content, and then assigning value to that content so that it can be sorted and shown to millions more people, some of whom see ads.

Maybe Reddit is where you find interesting links and watch funny videos. Perhaps it’s a place where you hang out with a small group of friends, or post to a community of millions. More likely, it’s a place you’ve heard of and perhaps visited before, where you know people are up to lots of things, most of which don’t concern you, until they do. Like other social platforms, Reddit has struggled with harassment, hate speech and abuse, and sometimes banned communities whose influence concerned them.

For people who study social platforms like Reddit, WallStreetBets — a clear example of an insular Reddit community breaking through to the larger site, and then beyond — called to mind a specific recent precedent: The_Donald, the subreddit that was, for a few years, the staging ground and the central organizing platform for supporters of Donald J. Trump.

To be clear, these precedents aren’t necessarily about ideology or broad style. Some commentators have suggested that the activity represented by WallStreetBets and Trumpism are part of the same populist, anti-elite phenomenon, but if Trumpism in general is instructive at all here, it’s as a reminder that self-described anti-elite movements can, in fact, turn out to be much more complicated than that.

WallStreetBets may look like a wall of slang, memes, jargon and inside jokes, largely populated by men, and it is. But it’s also very much a financial forum, and one that shares subscribers with other, more straightforward financial forums. (All of the top 20 subreddits with which WallStreetBets shares subscribers concern stocks, finance, betting or cryptocurrency. The first one that isn’t, sandwiched between PersonalFinanceCanada and Poker, is a community called FrugalMaleFashion.) It has a long and complicated set of rules beyond the ones enforced by Reddit itself, some broad (no market manipulation) and some narrow and exclusionary (screenshots of your “positions” must show “equity or losses of more than $2,500 or $10,000 USD for options or stocks respectively”).

The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 01:27AM
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Everything’s a Joke Until It’s Not - The New York Times

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WATCH NOW: Valpo man's 'joke' Tweet in GameStop market saga leads to false national story - nwitimes.com

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VALPARAISO — A Valparaiso man found it hard to believe Friday that what started out as a fake Tweet he posted about his supposed involvement in the GameStop market rally wound up as the focus on an online story by the New York Post.

In short, he said, the publication was duped into forming this Northwest Indiana connection to the GameStop story, which has gone viral across the world.

"I can't believe they bought this," said the 22-year-old Valparaiso resident. "It's very apparent this was a joke."

West, who described himself as a regular investor and a bit of an Internet junky, said it is not unusual for him to post fake Tweets as jokes. He said he opted to do so Wednesday after reading stories about the havoc caused by online-fueled purchases of GameStop and AMC stock.

Jack West, 22, of Valparaiso.

Provided by Jack West

The GameStop financial surge has rattled markets and made national news. 

GameStop stock rocketed from below $20 earlier this month to close at around $350 Wednesday as a volunteer army of investors on social media challenged big institutions who had placed market bets that the stock would fall. The action was even wilder Thursday when the stock swung between $112 and $483 before closing down 43.2% at $197.44. It then shot back up 60% in after-market trading.

West's Tweet made it appear he was participating in the action.

West said he joked in the Tweet that he "just took out a second mortgage on my parent's house while they were at work to buy more" AMC and GameStop stock. Let's goooo."

Provided by Jack West

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West said he included the stock stickers, which is how he is guessing the New York Post reporter got wind of his Tweet. The Tweet had just seven "likes" at the time he was contacted Thursday by the New York Post reporter.

West said he thought the Tweet would clearly be seen as a hoax considering it is not possible for him to obtain a second mortgage on his parent's home. But when the reporter pursued it as fact, West said he opted to see how far he could get with the joke.

It was not until 20 messages into the conversation that the reporter questioned how the mortgage could have been obtained, West said. West said he spun a tale that it was a small, local mortgage company carrying out business on Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic and that his computer camera was broken, preventing the company from seeing who it was dealing with.

"She (the reporter) believed that," West said. "She didn't even question it."

Expecting the interview to go nowhere, West said he was shocked to see the story post online a short time later featuring him. The story was then picked up by other news sources, and West said he was suddenly getting multiple requests for interviews.

"22-year-old risked parents' mortgage on GameStop: 'You only live once,' " the now archived story headline reads.

Messages left at the New York Post Friday seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Even after he revealed his original Tweet as a farce, the requests for interviews rolled in, he said.

He said the reporter from the New York Post later contacted him confirming the story was fake but said it was two hours later before it was taken down online.

"I do feel slightly bad," West said. "I didn't think any of this was going to happen."

Gallery: Recent arrests booked into Porter County Jail

Amanda Brehmer

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 41

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100243

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Amber Nicole Mikrut

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 22

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100259

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Andrew Thompson

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 35

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100230

Charges: Identity deception, felony

Anthony Brent Elijah Novetske

Arrest date: Jan. 18, 2021

Age: 24

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100224

Charges: Maintaining a common nuisance, felony

Provided

April Jean Underdahl

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 24

Residence: Hobart

Booking Number: 2100286

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Arthur Mirich

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 69

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100256

Charges: Theft w/prior, felony 

Ashley Dawn Griffith

Arrest date: Jan. 17, 2021

Age: 32

Residence: Gary

Booking Number: 2100214

Charges: Hypodermic needle possession, felony

Provided

Benjamin Norman Wright

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 31

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100282

Charges: OWI, felony

Provided

Byron Ray Chandler

Arrest date: Jan. 22, 2021

Age: 45

Residence: Chesterton

Booking Number: 2100269

Charges: OWI, felony

Provided

Carie Rippe

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 43

Residence: Chesterton

Booking Number: 2100255

Charges: Possession cocaine, felony

Christina Reece-Comstock

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 36

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100236

Charges: Domestic battery, felony

Daniel Joseph Duffee

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 42

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100261

Charges: Theft, felony

Provided

David Joseph Stokes-Lopez

Arrest date: Jan. 18, 2021

Age: 45

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100226

Charges: Battery, misdemeanor

Provided

Dennis Dwayne Oakes

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 46

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100258

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Derek Moffitt

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 30

Residence: Michigan City

Booking Number: 2100245

Charges: Possession controlled substance, felony

Elliott Raye

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 31

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100240

Charges: Possession hypodermic, felony

Harold Hazekamp

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 66

Residence: Oak Forest, IL

Booking Number: 2100233

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Jason Nicholas

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 32

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100253

Charges: Domestic battery, felony

Jason Torres

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 39

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100281

Charges: Habitual traffic offender, felony

Provided

John Wesley Judd

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 37

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100290

Charges: Methamphetamine possession, felony

Provided

Jordan Hile

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 25

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100234

Charges: Intimidation, felony

Jordan James Grant

Arrest date: Jan. 18, 2021

Age: 27

Residence: Hobart

Booking Number: 2100223

Charges: Cocaine possession, felony

Provided

Joshua James Dahl

Arrest date: Jan. 18, 2021

Age: 30

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100222

Charges: Identity deception, felony

Provided

Justin Michael Hlinko

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 27

Residence: Lansing

Booking Number: 2100283

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Lauren Beth Davis

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 39

Residence: Cedar Lake

Booking Number: 2100268

Charges: OWI, felony

Provided

Louis Mark Yuraitis

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 64

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100293

Charges: Strangulation, felony

Provided

Lucas Earl Hyre

Arrest date: Jan. 18, 2021

Age: 40

Residence: Merrillville

Booking Number: 2100227

Charges: Battery, misdemeanor

Provided

Mandee Lynn Pendleton

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 45

Residence: Kouts

Booking Number: 2100280

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Manuel De Gonzalez

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 21

Residence: Chicago

Booking Number: 2100287

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Marcos Romero-Arzola

Arrest date: Jan. 22, 2021

Age: 34

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100271

Charges: OWI, felony

Provided

Melissa Ann Nice

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 47

Residence: Burns Harbor

Booking Number: 2100257

Charges: Battery, misdemeanor

Provided

Michael Aaron Wilson

Arrest date: Jan. 17, 2021

Age: 38

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100219

Charges: Domestic battery, felony

Provided

Morgan Tayler Fravel

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 26

Residence: Evansville, Indiana

Booking Number: 2100265

Charges: Methamphetamine possession, felony

Provided

Nicole McGregor

Arrest date: Jan. 19, 2021

Age: 29

Residence: Lake Station

Booking Number: 2100241

Charges: Possession controlled substance, felony

Paul Eugene Parker

Arrest date: Jan. 22, 2021

Age: 53

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100270

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Peter James Dudek

Arrest date: Jan. 22, 2021

Age: 38

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100275

Charges: Domestic battery, felony

Provided

Roosevelt Jones

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 30

Residence: Hammond

Booking Number: 2100246

Charges: Resisting law enforcement, felony

Samuel Aaron Robb

Arrest date: Jan. 21, 2021

Age: 29

Residence: Valparaiso

Booking Number: 2100264

Charges: Methamphetamine possession, felony

Provided

Sarah Jean Shabaz

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 24

Residence: Hammond

Booking Number: 2100279

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Provided

Tiffany Handlen

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 33

Residence: Elkhart, IN

Booking Number: 2100244

Charges: Possession controlled substance, felony

Timothy Hardison

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 59

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100247

Charges: OWI, misdemeanor

Vikashchand Shukla

Arrest date: Jan. 20, 2021

Age: 29

Residence: Chicago

Booking Number: 2100252

Charges: Domestic battery, misdemeanor

William Daniel Udchitz III

Arrest date: Jan. 23, 2021

Age: 29

Residence: Portage

Booking Number: 2100292

Charges: Hypodermic needle possession, felony

Provided

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The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 03:00AM
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WATCH NOW: Valpo man's 'joke' Tweet in GameStop market saga leads to false national story - nwitimes.com

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Joke