Dogecoin Has a Top Dog Worth $2.1 Billion (wsj.com) 48
The dogecoin market has a pack leader. From a report: Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation -- a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. The holder's identity isn't known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies. It is hard to tell what to make of this giant position in what has long been a small and niche corner of the cryptocurrency world. Dogecoin was created in 2013 as a satirical homage to bitcoin. Its developers were riffing off the meme of a Shiba Inu dog with bad spelling habits. It wasn't designed to be used as a form of payment, or as anything except a joke. At the start of 2021, a dogecoin was worth about half a cent, even as bitcoin prices had surged to nearly $30,000.
Things have changed this year. Dogecoin surged in popularity after business and pop-culture icons including Tesla's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, rapper Soulja Boy and "Malcolm in the Middle" star Frankie Muniz began promoting it online. It isn't clear what caught their attention. Dogecoin's price has climbed over 900% this year to 5 cents apiece, according to CoinDesk. That makes the market worth about $6.9 billion, and puts its largest owner's holdings at roughly $2.1 billion. Like bitcoin, dogecoin is created by a process known as mining: people solve complex mathematical puzzles using computers to unlock new coins. It is nearly impossible to identify the holder due to the anonymity offered by cryptocurrencies.
Things have changed this year. Dogecoin surged in popularity after business and pop-culture icons including Tesla's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, rapper Soulja Boy and "Malcolm in the Middle" star Frankie Muniz began promoting it online. It isn't clear what caught their attention. Dogecoin's price has climbed over 900% this year to 5 cents apiece, according to CoinDesk. That makes the market worth about $6.9 billion, and puts its largest owner's holdings at roughly $2.1 billion. Like bitcoin, dogecoin is created by a process known as mining: people solve complex mathematical puzzles using computers to unlock new coins. It is nearly impossible to identify the holder due to the anonymity offered by cryptocurrencies.
Adding another ring to this circus (Score:5, Insightful)
- “They will greatly appreciate in value”
Why will they be worth more?
- “Simple: there is a limited supply, and demand will only go up”
Why will demand go up?
- “More and more people are getting into crypto. Even celebrities!”
Why are they getting into cryptocurrency?
- “Because the value will only go up!”
. Thanks. But no thanks.
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No, no, you just don't UNDERSTAND the value proposition. Here, you need to watch this 43-minute long Youtube video featuring a former Libertarian presidential candidate which just got posted on digitalgold.coinnews.co...
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You see, it's not a pyramid scheme. It's just that the people who enter first, the value of their investments goes up, because more people want to get in and see their value go up, and there's a limited supply of tokens. But then more people want to get in to take part in the rise, which raises the value of THEIR assets, and on and on forever. You see, everyone wins!
Have you ever read the writings of its inventor, Satoshi Amenhotep?
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I've heard of these offers before. But don't you usually get a free stay in a resort or something to go with it?
Altcoins are dead-ends (Score:1)
The decentralization is not software related. The decentralization is a consequence of incentives. If you fail the decentralization, the project is pointless. Altcoins have leaders, premine, paid shills, perpetual software updates... everything leads to more centralization. In other words, Altcoins are not designed to be decentralized.
If you want to use it as money (SoV) you should only use the best.
Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @PeterSchiff
An email saying you have gold is not the same as having gold. You
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OMG, do I have a bitcoin copypasta fan/stalker?
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We should help people who hate Bitcoin to never buy any. We could agree that Altcoins are a total failure.
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"....began promoting it online. It isn't clear what caught their attention."
I'm guessing it was the fact that it was worthless at the time so they could buy a load of it. ...hoping that there were still plenty of idiots out there.
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Hmm, just saw a post circulating among Dogecoin advocates. Apparently they believe that the large wallets are not individuals, but rather exchanges - where the value therein represents the holdings of numerous different individuals.
This might be possible to ascertain, if major exchanges were willing to be open about it.
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Youuuu crank dat Dogecoin
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in a present where we are a doomed people
Snowflake.
Re: Adding another ring to this circus (Score:2)
You forgot something (Score:2)
- “Simple: Drugs & money laundering and it takes the fed a real long time to crack down.
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Ever seen that video of the whale getting blown up on the beach?
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bezos is kinda cute
In what taxonomy??
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You mean things like paper with pictures of dead presidents? It's only worth something because the government says it is. The energy argument is hilarious because nobody ever mentioned it until that story ran a month ago. Now the tulip brigade has something new to yell while shitting on electric cars.
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Anonymity (Score:2)
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Author of the linked article is clueless. Dogecoin offers no anonymity. Law enforcement is very good at tracing most crypto now.
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By all means, explain the method which law enforcement uses to determine the origin of coins that have been run through a mixer.
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Mixers are not fundamental to any of the early PoW coins like Dogecoin. You're talking money laundering, which exists for fiat currencies as well. Yes, mixers may or may not work (depending on whether or not they can be compromised by law enforcement agencies/three letter agencies and turned into honeypots). As far as BTC, LTC, Dogecoin, and many other early PoW coins:
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
they've been traceable for years.
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They demonstrably work, they're cheap, and they're widely used. Money laundering with fiat currency is difficult, expensive (generally half the cut), and has a high risk of being caught.
Look, you don't have to take my word for it. When was the last time you saw a ransomware author demand fiat currency? When was the last time you a
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expensive (generally half the cut)
Then that would be... because it's obviously worth it to do so.
GTFOOH with this "crypto is for for criminals" shit; it's for those who've taken HL Mencken too literally (miners) and the most desperate and unimaginative of speculators, and no one else*
*The existence of baseband processors and 'management engine' backdoors means only the dumbest of wannabe criminals is going to want to be paid electronically.
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Oh looks like they ARE going after the mixers, too.
https://thenextweb.com/hardfor... [thenextweb.com]
So
hah!
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Your article literally concludes with, "Cash may still be king, but if criminals want to operate online, cryptocurrencies are their financial weapons of choice." - exactly the opposite of what you're trying to claim.
Taking down "a" single service has essentially zero impact, and there are peer-to-peer mixers with no central authority as well.
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Eventually they'll figure out how to get at the rest of them. Same way they've been chasing money laundering schemes for ages. Point still stands: BTC is NOT untraceable. The fact that you need laundering services to hide transactions proves that. Same goes for Dogecoin.
The dark web has moved on to various privacycoins, though a few firms claim to be able to track those as well, not that they're static targets.
real and actual worth vs nominal worth (Score:2)
Good (Score:1)
Tulips... Beautiful Tuilips... (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Not to mention scorched-ass in the evening, since that's where this retard-fest is going to end up at.
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Oh this argument again. You have anything new to add?
Just FYI (Score:2)
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Yeah, lost wallets make it hard to tell exactly how much pumping a cryptocurrency is making early adopters gazillionaires or not. Bitcoin, for example - I find it weird that Satoshi has never touched his 1,1M bitcoins. Not spent, not even moved. Some people are arguing, "Well, it's because he's altruistic, he doesn't want to corrupt the currency when he's a multi-trillionaire". But really, though - nothing, ever? It does make me wonder if he truly does not have access to it.
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I think "Satoshi" intentionally destroyed the private keys for the pre-mined coins, or s/he's dead. David Kleiman is a reasonable candidate for a dead Satoshi.
BTW unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin has a practically unlimited number of coins to mine. It's not supposed to be deflationary. I expect it's going to drop again pretty soon. If it goes up again, I might be tempted to sell my Dogecoins though. I'd rather it doesn't - I prefer it as a worthless meme cryptocurrency.
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>Yeah, lost wallets make it hard to tell . . .
actually, it's worse than *that* . . .
put aside all of the other issues with these currencies, and issue that a currency is somehow stable. Even assume that the value has stabilized and steady. (OK, may as well assume free flying unicorns for every little girl while we're at it, but let's just assume this for the moment.)
Not knowing whether that 28% is available to someone or not is a *really* big deal. If it's accepted as lost, for example, and turns out
Shouldn't that title read... (Score:2)
Dogecoin Has a Top Doge?
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Yes, and a big boi at that!
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paper value (Score:3)
Very early in my career, I worked in a dot-com company. People there were glued to the stock tickers that told them how rich they had become with their stock options.
I was apparently the only one who had spent a few years working in a financial environment before that, and who understood that the value of those papers is exactly zero until the day you can actually cash them in.
So many hopes were dashed when the company sold out one day and then the stock price plummeted at the end of the dot-com era.
This guy - he owns that money on paper. As soon as he starts cashing it, the price changes. That's what happens when you cash out a substantial amount of the entire market. It isn't actually worth this sum, because you cannot convert it to that amount of fiat currency.
yep, no intrinsic value (Score:2)
and the USD.
and any other form of currency ever invented.
it's worth exactly what you can trade it for.
you don't need a PhD in cryptology to understand that.