Dogecoin (DOGE): The Cultural Significance of a Joke Crypto

Cultural Significance of Dogecoin

Dogecoin is heavily influenced by the ebb and flow of social media. Specifically, DOGE has received Twitter shoutouts from celebrities. For example, Elon Musk jokingly accepted an appointment as CEO of Dogecoin as the result of a public poll on Twitter. Then in July 2020, a social media campaign on TikTok called on millions of users to purchase $25 USD worth of DOGE tokens to push the price of DOGE to $1. Some consider this campaign to have been an illegal “pump-and-dump” scheme to drive up the price for the benefit of current DOGE holders so that they could sell at a profit. While the push fell short of its stated benchmark, it did manage to increase the price of DOGE by more than 600%. While a seemingly trivial pursuit, this event highlights the power that social media can hold in attracting wider crypto adoption.

The significance of Dogecoin has continued to spill over into other aspects of popular culture as well. An example of this is Dogeminer — a web-based video game (also available on the Google Play store) that simulates the mining of Dogecoin. It teaches players the basic logistics of cryptocurrency mining in a fun and approachable way, leading many players to deeper involvement in the crypto community at large.

How to Use DOGE

Dogecoin was not intended to be an investment or store of value. Instead, Dogecoin’s primary practical function so far has been as a form of tipping (especially in online settings). People donate DOGE to online content creators for funny, informative, or otherwise noteworthy content. Tipping content creators on Reddit, Twitter, and Twitch is yet another example of cryptocurrency’s entanglement with social media and popular internet culture.

The Good-Willed Dogecoin Community

The charitable spirit of DOGE tipping has expanded into full-fledged charitable causes. DOGE has been used to support numerous donation campaigns, ranging from silly to noble.

In support of the silly, the Dogecoin community essentially crowd-funded a sponsorship for an underdog Nascar driver as a sort of publicity stunt. Reddit users identified Nascar racer Josh Wise as an up-and-coming racer who was sponsorless. Within eight days of fundraising, Wise was fully sponsored to compete in a Nascar race at the famous Talladega Superspeedway thanks to his new sponsor, the Dogecoin community. Wise received Dogecoin crypto donations totaling $55,000, and he raced in a Dogecoin-wrapped Chevrolet with a sizable Shiba Inu — Dogecoin’s emblematic mascot — on the hood.

As for the charitable causes, through Colorado-based nonprofit the Dogecoin Foundation, the Dogecoin community has fulfilled the following donation campaigns:

• $25,000 to 4 Paws For Ability, a nonprofit that trains service animals for children and veterans with disabilities 

• More than $30,000 to send athletes from India and Africa to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia 

• In excess of $30,000 to a nonprofit campaign that aims to provide access to clean drinking water in Kenya via a program called Doge4Water

On an unofficial level, the Dogecoin community has a track record of supporting content creators with micro-donations, as well as supporting charitable organizations with much larger donations. Yet on an organizational level, the Dogecoin Foundation has been inactive since 2015, which was also the same year that Dogecoin last received significant technical updates.