A few tens of thousands of Dogecoins I casually mined back then can really be exchanged for a house now? Recently, I came across a screenshot of holdings shared by an old player in the crypto circle, and this sentence always evokes my complex memories of this 'joke coin' over the past decade — it has transformed from a casual creation by two programmers into a 'meme top stream' that stirs the crypto market, creating myths of overnight wealth while also burying countless greedy investors in losses.
Going back to 2013, when Bitcoin was just gaining popularity in a small circle, two programmers, Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus, found the 'seriousness' of cryptocurrency too boring and casually created a token using the then-popular Shiba Inu meme (Doge Meme) — there was no complex blockchain innovation, no technical blueprint in a white paper, and the name was straightforwardly called 'Dogecoin', essentially just a 'meme coin' for teasing.
At that time, Dogecoin was truly worthless. Old computers could mine several thousand to tens of thousands of coins overnight; some people in forums used it to give 'meme rewards', a few coins could exchange for a joke; there was even a player who initiated a 'Dogecoin crowdfunding' to raise $50,000 to sponsor the Jamaican bobsled team for the Sochi Winter Olympics — no one considered it an 'investment product'; losing a wallet or forgetting a private key didn’t cause anyone to feel bad, as a handful could be bought for a few cents, and even 'retail investors' were too lazy to be its harvesting targets.
No one expected that this token, regarded as a joke by everyone, would face a turning point seven years later. In 2020, Musk suddenly proclaimed himself the 'Dogecoin Father' on Twitter, sometimes calling it 'the people's cryptocurrency', other times saying 'Dogecoin is more suitable for daily payments than Bitcoin', even promoting it live to audiences across America on Saturday Night Live.
These seemingly casual 'shouts' directly pulled Dogecoin from a 'dust price' of $0.001 to a high of $0.73 in May 2021 — an increase of over 700 times. Various 'wealth myths' began circulating in the community: someone found a wallet forgotten on a hard drive from 2017, which contained 100,000 Dogecoins that had turned from a few hundred dollars into over $70,000; someone bought 10,000 coins with pocket money back then, which could cover a down payment in a second-tier city at its peak; and an old miner shared 'mining records', stating that the Dogecoins he deleted from his hard drive because they took up space could now be exchanged for a Tesla.
I myself was once an 'insider' in this carnival. At the end of 2020, seeing someone in my friend circle boast about turning a few hundred into thousands with Dogecoin, I bought 50,000 coins at $0.004, spending $200 with a 'joking' mindset. Unexpectedly, after one of Musk's tweets, the price soared to $0.05 a week later, and my account instantly became $2,500 — at the time, I joked with friends, saying 'this money is enough to buy a new phone'.
When did greed start? Probably when the price shot up to $0.3, and someone said 'it can break $1'; by the time it reached $0.5, the group was buzzing with 'Musk wants Tesla to accept Dogecoin payments'. Looking at the $25,000 in my account, I began to fantasize, 'if it goes up a bit more, I can cover the down payment', and I hesitated to take profits. As a result, after May 2021, Dogecoin plummeted from $0.73 to below $0.1, and I was trapped at $0.6, forcibly falling from my 'wealth dream' back to 'reality' — in the end, when I cut losses to exit, I only made a few thousand dollars, not even enough to buy the 'new phone' I initially hoped for.
Now looking at Dogecoin, it still remains the most 'storytelling' presence in the crypto market: Musk still occasionally mentions it, and recently said 'the X platform (formerly Twitter) is considering integrating Dogecoin payments', causing the price to jump by 10%; Grayscale submitted a Dogecoin spot ETF application at the end of last year, and the market began to speculate on a 'retail investor wave'; some even guess that if Musk really runs for president, Dogecoin might become a dual narrative of 'political meme + financial meme' — every news can stir up waves of volatility in the short term.
But aside from these 'stories', the essence of Dogecoin hasn't changed much: there’s no scarcity (unlimited total supply, still increasing every year), no real application scenarios (besides occasional 'meme payments', it’s almost never implemented), and the price fluctuations rely entirely on 'emotion + celebrity effect'. Some say it’s a 'Ponzi scheme in disguise', rising only on new funds stepping in; others claim it’s a 'totem of faith in the crypto market', relying on the consensus of 'many hands make light work'.
As for 'whether it can reach $1', no one can give a definite answer. Old players in the crypto circle often say 'the core of the crypto market is story + belief'; after all, Bitcoin and Ethereum, which were once not taken seriously, also rose step by step relying on the stories of 'decentralization' and 'smart contracts', right? But the peculiarity of Dogecoin lies in its story being too 'absurd' — a token that started as a joke, if it really rises to $1, it means a market cap exceeding $130 billion, higher than many traditional giant companies, which itself is fraught with uncertainty.
However, one thing is very clear: never bet all your hopes for 'financial freedom' on it. Among the people I know, those who made money with Dogecoin are all 'small positions playing memes, taking profits when they see good'; while those who suffered severe losses are mostly 'all in betting on $1', ultimately ground down by volatility to cut losses. After all, Dogecoin might be an 'unexpected joy' on the road to financial freedom, but more likely it’s a 'joke trap' that will trip you up.
Just like the old player who mined tens of thousands of Dogecoins and now has exchanged for a house said: 'I didn’t earn Dogecoin money, I earned the money of ‘not taking it seriously’ — if I had really treated it as a 'must-rise belief', I would have lost it all long ago.'
