Dogecoin was created by programmers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer on December 6, 2013, in an effort to reach a larger audience with a cryptocurrency that was less intimidating than Bitcoin, which at the time had some negative associations in the minds of the general public due to Silk Road and other nefarious projects disproportionately dominating media headlines. It was also a parody response to the surge in altcoins.

Dogecoin is based on Luckycoin, which is a fork of Litecoin. Dogecoin’s name derives from the “doge” Internet meme which became popular in 2013. This meme features the image of a Shiba Inu, a japanese dog, with overlaid text that captures the dog's imaginary and humorous thoughts in broken English.

Starting on December 19, 2013, the price of dogecoin rose almost 300% over the course of three days from $0.00026 to $0.00095, before falling 80% three days later, exhibiting the whipsaw volatility characteristic of lesser-known altcoins at that time. Shortly thereafter, millions of dogecoins were stolen from the online cryptocurrency wallet Dogewallet. In response to this hack, the community came together and formed the “SaveDogemas” initiative for the purpose of donating dogecoins to all those affected by the theft. Eventually, everyone who lost dogecoins in the Dogewallet hack was made whole.

As the price of cryptocurrencies rose en masse in 2017, the price of dogecoin rose as well, reaching a peak of $0.017 in January of 2018, with a total market capitalization of $2 billion.

In July 2020, dogecoin began trending on TikTok, a popular video social networking platform, which caused its price to appreciate dramatically. On July 18, 2020, it surged another 14%, from $0.003052 to $0.003433, when Elon Musk tweeted about it.

Dogecoin uses the same consensus mechanism as Litecoin, which uses the scrypt proof of work algorithm for mining. Initially, the dogecoin protocol delivered a randomized block reward to a miner who successfully mined a block of dogecoin transactions to the dogecoin blockchain. Several months later, however, it was re-written to deliver a static block reward. Dogecoin’s block time is one minute, whereas Litecoin’s block time is 2.5 minutes and Bitcoin’s block time is 10 minutes.

The Dogecoin community has a long history of fundraising for unique causes. It raised $36,000 USD to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympic Games in 2014, $40,000 USD to build a well in the Tana river basin in Kenya, and $55,000 USD to sponsor Nascar driver Josh Wise.

Dogecoin has become a popular way for users on the dogecoin subreddit to tip or “micro-tip” each other via the Dogetipbot.