Dogecoin

Dogecoin picked up users at a speed that shocked both founders. Within 30 days of launch, Dogecoin.com drew over one million visitors5. By December 19, just 13 days after going live, the coin's value jumped nearly 300% in 72 hours, rising from $0.00026 to $0.0009518. This happened while Bitcoin and most other altcoins were crashing after China banned bank investment in cryptocurrency. Dogecoin was one of the only coins that went up during the crash16.

Reddit's r/Dogecoin became the coin's center of gravity. Users tipped each other DOGE through the "dogetipbot," a Reddit bot that let people send small amounts of Dogecoin as rewards for good posts15. The low value of each coin made tipping feel playful rather than transactional. By 2014, the bot had processed roughly $150,000 in tips among 56,000 users15.

On Christmas Day 2013, the wallet platform Dogewallet was hacked, with millions of coins redirected to a single address19. The hack became the most-tweeted altcoin event at the time5. The community responded by launching "SaveDogemas," a donation drive that raised enough to reimburse every affected user within about a month5.

In January 2014, Dogecoin's trading volume briefly surpassed that of all other cryptocurrencies combined, including Bitcoin9. That same month, the community raised $30,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi14. They raised $25,000 for a UK service dog charity and $30,000 for clean water wells in Kenya1.

The NASCAR sponsorship brought peak visibility. In March 2014, members of Reddit's r/NASCAR noticed driver Josh Wise was racing without a sponsor. They appealed to r/Dogecoin, and within eight days, 1,200 donations averaging $41 each raised 67.5 million DOGE, worth roughly $55,0001. The car's design was crowdsourced on Reddit and the #98 was nicknamed the "Moonrocket"17. The Moolah.io founder accidentally donated 20 million DOGE by adding an extra zero but honored the mistake2.