How many Dogecoins are there? Dogecoin’s supply explored

Discover how many Dogecoins are there and their impact on the crypto market. Explore the unique, uncapped Dogecoin supply and its global spread. In the last few years, cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm, offering a plethora of digital currencies from the well-known, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), to the more niche and whimsical, such as Dogecoin (DOGE). In this article, we delve into the specifics of Dogecoin, addressing the fundamental question; how many Dogecoins are there? Dogecoin: a brief history Before plunging into the numbers, let’s revisit the origins of Dogecoin. Launched in 2013 by software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus, Dogecoin was intended to be a fun, less serious alternative to mainstream cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which Palmer and Markus felt was being taken too seriously. The technology behind Dogecoin is derived from Litecoin (LTC) and Luckycoin (LKC). It uses Scrypt technology in its proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, differentiating it from Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm. This technical difference has implications for DOGE miners – it allows for faster block processing times, which means faster transaction times. The memecoin, whose mascot is a Shiba Inu dog, a popular internet meme when it was created, instantly gained traction on Reddit, amassing a market value of $8 million shortly after its launch. The coin’s creators didn’t initially aim for major financial success or widespread adoption but rather sought to create a friendly and inclusive community around the memecoin. Its price remained relatively flat for seven years, from December 2013 to December 2020. However, thanks to a strong community and notable endorsements from high-profile individuals like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and investor and television personality Mark Cuban, DOGE eventually ascended from a quirky meme-based Dogecoin’s uncapped supply: a sea of coins Most cryptocurrencies have a maximum supply cap. Once all the coins have been mined, no new coins will be produced. Scarcity is one of the factors that can drive up the price of a cryptocurrency. For instance, Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million and about 19.6 million BTC have been mined to date, leaving fewer than 1.4 million left to be mined, with their value expected to rise exponentially the closer we get to the cap. However, Dogecoin operates differently. Its uncapped supply means miners can continuously mine Dogecoin with no upper limit. The reason for this is tied to Dogecoin’s block rewards. Initially, the block reward was random, and its makers had proposed a coin limit of 100 billion. However, since the Dogecoin community implemented a soft fork in 2014, the reward has been fixed at 10,000 DOGE per block and the idea of a coin supply cap was also done away with. The new setup ensured miners were always incentivized to continue mining to secure the Dogecoin network. With millions of new tokens mined daily, this uncapped supply model has resulted in the current total number of Dogecoins standing at nearly 143 billion. It has also sparked discussions on the memecoin’s susceptibility to inflation in the long haul.