Dogecoin is the new Bitcoin. Maybe, it’s too early to say that but in the next few months Dogecoin may emerge as the cryptocurrency of 2021. It’s already on path, witnessing a massive surge since the start of the year. Dogecoin has given nearly 1900 per cent returns since January 2021. Yes, you read that right. There was a time when one coin was worth less than a cent, but the recent surge has taken its value to $0.122680 or almost 12 cents. That’s incredible for a digital currency started as a joke. We will get to that bit in a while.

According to a report published by stock market news site Benzinga on Tuesday, the cryptocurrency soared to nearly 1,900 per cent since the beginning of 2021. The jump is significant given that Bitcoin has seen a surge of 117.47 percent during the same period. Yes, Bitcoin has come a long way and is tipped as the cryptocurrency that will define the future, but one cannot rule the impact Dogecoin can possibly have.

Dogecoin was started as a joke by two software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as fun and instant cryptocurrency in December 2013. If you have been using the internet, there is a chance that you might have come across or heard about the Doge meme. It featured the iconic Shibe.

Palmer, an Australian marketer, once joked about combining two of the internet’s most talked-about topics: cryptocurrency and Doge. Investing in Dogecoin,” Palmer tweeted, “pretty sure it’s the next big thing.”

The tweet was noticed by a lot of people on the internet who started talking about Dogecoin. Palmer kept the joke going by buying Dogecoin.com domain and uploaded a photoshopped Shibe on a coin.

Billy Markus, who was literally on the other side of the world, working as a software engineer at IBM, saw a note left by Palmer on the mentioned domain. He tried to get in touch with the latter but started working on Dogecoin after failing to hear from him. Markus has admitted to using Bitcoin’s open-source code for creating Dogecoin. He changed few elements and made 100 billion Dogecoins against 21 million Bitcoins.

Also, he made them easier to mine. EhDig. Markus replaced the word mine with dig, because Dogs don’t mine, they dig.