Dog-themed tokens: how they differ and who affects their price

Dogecoin was created as a joke at the end of 2013 to poke fun at the cryptocurrency market, where new "coins" were springing up like mushrooms after rain. Jackson Palmer, an Australian sales manager at Adobe Systems, apparently thought, "I wanna do the same." So he posted a popular Internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog and proposed creating a new Doge coin. He very quickly found support in the person of Billy Marcus, a programmer from the United States. He aspired to surpass Bitcoin, so he considered the new project a personal challenge and an opportunity to gain valuable experience. 

They used Litecoin as a base to develop the coin. Mainnet was built using a unique Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. The Script algorithm was used for cryptocurrency mining. On December 6, 2013, the first block was created, and the first Dogecoin coins were issued. The creators decided to set an unlimited supply, so their coin would differ from Bitcoin even in this regard.  Palmer and Markus positioned Dogecoin as a funny and exciting crypto that will attract its own audience of non-boring cryptoheads who will be more impressed by meme dogs than the technology behind it. The founders gave themselves the amusing nickname "Shibetoshi Nakamoto" (it's obvious which side the pin was on) and tried to support the "fun" in all aspects of the project.

This approach was a "breath of fresh air" for the crypto market at the time, with its assets in a strict "nerdy" style that did not evoke any positive associations. And it worked out: Dogecoin reached a staggering market capitalization of $89 million just in a few months after its launch, and quickly hit the Top 5 of the Coinmarketcap rating. Thus, Palmer and Marcus unwittingly helped to establish the new trend of meme coins in the cryptocurrency industry. 

At the beginning of 2014, the first similar coins appeared: MONA and Catcoin, whose creators decided to bet on the cat Internet meme as opposed to the dog one in Dogecoin.  However, these projects did not gain popularity, so the dog theme continued to dominate meme coins.

A new wave of popularity began after 2020. New images of dogs were chosen for meme coins, which appeared by the dozens, in an effort to push Dogecoin aside and attract at least a portion of its audience.

The new "dog" tokens also claimed the fame of the first meme coin and used the word "doge" or dog breed in their names: Shibu Inu, Dogelon Mars, Baby Doge Coin, Pitbull, Vita Inu, DogeBonk, King Shiba, Dogs of Elon, Doggy, DogeCash, SHIBAVAX, Dogeswap, FLOKI, Dogechain, Doge Killer, and The Doge NFT. And this is far from a complete list of coins whose owners envied the glory of Dogecoin and dreamed of knocking it off its pedestal. However, it did not go as planned.  

Dogecoin could not be suppressed for a variety of reasons. The main one, however, is Elon Musk's propitiousness.

The world's richest man chose the first coin meme as a favorite and began PR with a certain frequency on Twitter in 2019. Short tweets that made explicit or implicit references to Dogecoin raised the price, created a buzz, and attracted new supporters to the project.  Elon Musk has effectively become a manipulative market maker who enjoys this role and how his tweets affect the market and the crypto community in general. Some even threatened to sue him, but Elon Musk wasn't scared...

By starting to accept Dogecoin as payment for Tesla electric vehicles, Musk effectively put Dogecoin out of the reach of rivals from the meme camp.

Dogecoin's main advantages are its popularity, technology, and ecosystem. The coin has its own PoW blockchain and allows users to earn money by mining in pools or alone. It is available for purchase at any major exchange. Some businesses, including Tesla, accept Dogecoin as payment. This coin even has its own NFT marketplace, updates wallets on a regular basis, and intends to build x-chain bridges with other ecosystems.

As for competing projects, those launched after 2020 followed a different, simpler path. All of these meme coins are tokens that run on third-party blockchains and do not have their own ecosystem. In fact, their owners are simply exploiting the internet meme trend, offering "air" rather than technology. Furthermore, none of them have Elon Musk's support. 

The main danger is that meme coins are much more speculative than cryptocurrencies with large market caps and are heavily dependent on community support. Meme coins frequently experience high volatility, are susceptible to pumps and dumps, and are manipulated by market makers. The price of any "dog" token can skyrocket in a matter of seconds, and plummet just as quickly when another meme coin with a more attractive dog face appears on the market. 

Therefore, before investing in a "dog" token, you should carefully consider all of the risks and thoroughly analyze the project.