In December 2013, IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe marketer Jackson Palmer built a cryptocurrency in a few hours to mock the speculation swirling around Bitcoin. They put a Shiba Inu meme and Comic Sans on a coin forked from Luckycoin, itself a fork of Litecoin. Because it could be mined on ordinary computers and confirmed transactions every minute, Dogecoin drew a million visitors to its site within 30 days and attracted a community more interested in tipping strangers than getting rich.

This episode traces how that community gave way to something stranger. Early fans refunded hacking victims, sent the Jamaican bobsled team to Sochi, and sponsored a NASCAR driver. Then both founders walked away, the supply cap was abandoned, and by 2021 celebrity tweets, trading bots, and Robinhood turned the coin into a speculative frenzy worth as much as 85 billion dollars. The story ends with meme money buying stakes in European sports teams and sharing an acronym with a government advisory group.

• On Christmas Day 2013, a hacker redirected transactions on Doge Wallet and stole millions of coins. The community’s Save Dogemas drive refunded every victim within a month.
• In 2014 supporters raised 36,000 dollars for the Jamaican bobsled team, more than 30,000 dollars for a well in Kenya, and 55,000 dollars to wrap Josh Wise’s car for Talladega.
• Dogecoin adds 5 billion new coins every year with no cap, a design that discourages hoarding and encourages spending.
• During Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance in May 2021 the price fell nearly 30 percent. A 258 billion dollar lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme was dismissed in August 2024.
• An entity called the House of Doge became the largest equity holder in the Italian soccer club Triestina and invested in hockey teams in Switzerland and Milan.