Dogecoin

Crypto-Canine

Move over Bitcoin! There’s another cryptocurrency on the rise.

Dogecoin nearly doubled in value last weekend and is now worth more than two-billion dollars. Dogecoin’s mascot is the Japanese breed, the Shibu Inu.

CNBC reports:

Dogecoin is an example of an altcoin, which are peer-to-peer digital tokens that descended from bitcoin. The more popular ones include ethereum, which topped $1,000 for the first time on Thursday, and ripple, which saw a staggering 35,000 percent jump in its value last year… The creators of dogecoin positioned the virtual token as “the internet currency” that can allow users to easily send money online.

I also found stories on the Internet saying that Dogecoin launched in 2013 as a parody of the Bitcoin boom. If that’s true, then I bet its creators are pretty surprised by its success. CNBC continues:

The virtual currency’s meteoric rise in recent months has the project’s creator expressing concern about market excess. Jackson Palmer, the founder of dogecoin who left the team in 2015, told cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk that it was telling that the token saw such a sharp jump in price even when the project hadn’t released a software update in over 2 years.

Whatever is going on, I think people should invest in cryptocurrencies with great caution!  The South Korean government, the third largest market for cryptocurrency, is going to ban trading there. You can read more about that from Reuters.