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Following a few years of inactivity, the Dogecoin Foundation is being reestablished with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin serving as the organization’s “blockchain and crypto adviser,” according to an announcement posted Tuesday on the foundation’s website.
Fast facts
- Originally founded in 2014, the non-profit organization aims to support the Dogecoin ecosystem and community with a particular focus on increasing the uptake of the cryptocurrency on a grassroots level. The foundation said that in the coming weeks, it would be announcing new projects that would complement its Core Wallet to enable faster integration and easier APIs (application programming interfaces) for financial, social and charitable projects that wish to use Dogecoin.
- Another goal is to prevent the co-opting the Dogecoin brand for individual gain, which would limit the community’s ability to use the logo and brand. For instance, in 2014 one member sought to limit unauthorized use of the Dogecoin logo by putting its trademark office under the Foundation’s name. This way, the Foundation retains legal rights to Dogecoin’s branding but can still grant fair use of it to projects deemed to be valid within the community.
- Other prominent board members include Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus and core developer Max Keller. Neuralink CEO Jared Birchall sits on the board as a representative of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is perhaps the world’s most prominent and vocal Dogecoin supporter. The Foundation said its initial goal is to secure funding for the first three years to onboard a minimum full-time staff.
- This news comes as global blockchain technology company Bots Inc. announces it is allowing its users to buy pre-owned Tesla cars with Dogecoin. Bots Inc. partners with individual pre-owned Tesla dealerships to allow them to accept Dogecoin directly from the customer. For a time, Tesla had accepted Bitcoin for new models of cars before Musk reversed himself on that option, citing environmental concerns and triggering a Bitcoin selloff that contributed to a crypto market crash.
- Speaking at the virtual Bitcoin event “The ₿ Word,” Musk said that as BTC mining becomes more environmentally friendly, Tesla “most likely” would resume accepting Bitcoin once crypto mining globally uses at least 50% renewable sources.
- From its humble beginnings in 2013 as a joke based on Bitcoin, Dogecoin was named after the “Doge” meme that was popular at the time. Dogecoin’s price saw very little movement until this year, when its price rose over 800% in a month to an all-time high of US$0.6848 on May 11, making it the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap for a short time. Dogecoin crashed along with the rest of the crypto market shortly after but still remains the seventh-largest cryptocurrency in the world. Doge is trading at US$0.2996 at publishing time.
- Dogecoin’s success as a “memecoin” has spawned dozens of copycat cryptocurrencies, such as Shiba Inu Coin, named after the breed of dog that DOGE is based on. Expanding further upon the meme, Floki Coin and Baby Doge have also sprung up recently and enjoyed support from Musk on social media.
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