Most Expensive Tweet Ever Sends $11,000 To Kenyan Water Charity Via Dogecoin

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthickey/2014/03/17/such-generosity-most-expensive-tweet-ever-sends-11000-to-kenyan-water-charity-via-dogecoin/

by reppic • 12 years ago

78 77 12 years ago

forbes.com

sp3326• 12 years ago

Is it true that Dogecoin's value is kept artificially low?

wcummings• 12 years ago

It's inflationary, coins will never stop being created and they're mined extremely quickly

https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/23#issuecomment-...

untilHellbanned5• 12 years ago

its inflationary in the sense that 5% and decreasing new coins are mineable each year after all 100 billion original coins are mined,

the actual % inflation is comparable to bitcoin's and less than litecoin's.

alexro• 12 years ago

There was a problem with multipools exploiting the 'random' block reward - which wasn't truly random - and getting more coins than they normally would. As of now this has been fixed and the price should go up a bit. Also, in about month time the block reward will halve.

aestra6• 12 years ago

Why would fixing that issue cause the price to go up? There was still the same amount of coins created.

Also - they apparently fixed it by making the block reward fixed. http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/13/dogecoin-forks-aga...

dragontamer3• 12 years ago

Yes, the 100 Billion cap plays a huge role here.

With so many Dogecoins flooding the market, it is likely that Doge will remain near worthless forever. Which means it will always be an easy coin to experiment with.

sp3326• 12 years ago

Doge and bitcoin are very easily divisible, so that's not why they're more or less valuable. Bitcoins are rewarded at 250,000,000 satoshis/block!

GrinningFool6• 12 years ago

Is it true that bitcoin's value is kept artificially high?

Phrased another way: define 'artificially' in this context.

slipstream-4• 12 years ago

As a shibe, I always like it when Dogecoin stuff is on hackernews.

sp3326• 12 years ago

Shh... on the internet, no one knows you're a dog!

kerkeslager• 12 years ago

Since Forbes insists on putting an ad wall in front of their content, here's the full text of the article without ads:

Dogecoin – Bitcoin’s goofy little brother – has just made history. A member of the Dogecoin community donated 14 million Dogecoins (worth about US$11,000 on the exchanges) to a charity with one single message on Twitter. That tweet, to an automated Twitter-bot, is the most money ever donated or sent directly via a tweet.

The Dogecoins were for Doge4Water, a charity set up to help people in Kenya get clean drinking water. The Dogecoins will be converted to real money, and that money will be used to build new wells. The tweet, by an anonymous person who goes by @savethemhood, helped to push the Doge4Water to well past its 40 million Dogecoin (US$30,000) goal. The charity had hoped to reach it by March 22nd, which is World Water Day, and it met that target with a week to spare.

This isn’t the first time the Dogecoin community showed its charitable nature. Last month it raised enough money to help get the broke Jamaican Bobsled Team (yes, that one) to the Sochi Winter Olympics. The generosity makes sense, as Dogecoin is positioned to be the “tipping currency” of the Internet.

For a crypto-currency that was started as something of a joke, Dogecoin is doing some good, and part of that is through the sheer number of Dogecoin users. By volume, it’s the most-traded crypto-currency in the world. Part of that is because it’s so easy and cheap to get into. A person can buy-in for as little as a dollar (US$1 is worth about 1300 Dogecoins at the time this post went live), and the tipping culture is rife within the community. For example, on the Dogecoin sub-reddit, users are encouraged to tip one another small amounts of Dogecoin for insightful or positive comments along with “upvotes” (the quasi-currency of Reddit).

The Dogecoin community has the aim of expanding that “tipping” culture to the rest of the internet by keeping the price of Dogecoin artificially low. Unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin is not meant to be an investment currency, so much of the shiftiness that Bitcoin users have had to endure likely won’t make its way to the Dogecoin world (though that’s not to say it’s immune).

Still, there’s always going to be some controversy with crypto-currencies, and besides being used as a force for good for bobsledders and Kenyan villagers, Dogecoin, with its catch phrases, such as “wow” and “such currency” and “so crypto”, could be a great way to explore what these new virtual currencies can and can’t do, all while maintaining a sense of humor.

sp3326• 12 years ago

Doesn't the adwall go away if you click the link a second time?

slipstream-4• 12 years ago

what exactly is wrong with using Adblock?

mschuster91• 12 years ago

Doesnt work on the Forbes interstitial, simple as that. Same for adf.ly and other such crapsites. ABP doesnt show the ads but cannot redirect the crapsite.

GrinningFool6• 12 years ago

Since forbes insists on putting an ad wall in front of their content, you're going to lift the copyrighted content in its entirety and paste it here instead of just clicking 'skip this ad'? (And if you have ABP, the ad is blank.)

untilHellbanned5• 12 years ago

Dogecoin has got a great attitude, think Bitcoin would benefit from being more endearing.

shitlord• 12 years ago

To the average person, Dogecoin is basically Bitcoin without any of the libertarianism. It's kind of hilarious how mad some of the Bitcoin guys get whenever Dogecoin is in the news.

chadwickthebold• 12 years ago

How do they actually go about converting Dogecoin to Dollars? Evertyhing I've read and heard about Dogecoin is that it's kind of a novelty thing, so are there actually people out there who are paying to convert dollars to doge?

slipstream-4• 12 years ago

IIRC there's a couple of exchanges that do DOGE->USD.. but you can also do DOGE->BTC->USD.

kattenkorven2• 12 years ago

There's a growing list of exchanges where you can do this

https://www.kraken.com

https://www.anxpro.com

https://www.vaultofsatoshi.com

https://www.coinmkt.com

res0nat0r• 12 years ago

Can any of these sites actually realize that in actual USD in a reasonable timeframe? How much time and effort and waiting does it take to see $11k in their hands? Or do they have to do transactions of $100/max once per week with a waiting time of 10 days each?

sillysaurus3• 12 years ago

Vault of Satoshi charges $99/mo for access to their exchange? That seems absurdly high just for access. I wonder why people would pay that much, and how popular it is?

EDIT: Ah. $99/mo in exchange for zero trade fees. That's actually an interesting dynamic.

aestra6• 12 years ago

How I do it:

Go to CoinedUp and convert dogecoin -> bitcoin. Send bitcoin to coinbase. Sell bitcoin on coinbase.

Kraken isn't open to USD transactions in my area yet.

Also - selling doge to private parties for USD, possibly in person.

pkulak5• 12 years ago

As a Keynesian I love that Dogecoin is the first (that I know of) crypto currency that isn't deflationary. I do wish there was a way to make the things other than mining though. I hate "mining". Such a waste of resources.

Aaronontheweb2• 12 years ago

One of the forms of wealth accumulation that's taken off in the Dogecoin community is tipping - it's been pretty successful on Reddit, 4Chan, and Twitter as a means of rewarding people who create useful / insightful things. The YouTube tipbot is starting to get some traction now too.

Here's a post from yesterday that includes some statistics about how much volume in USD is actually distributed on Reddit via the Dogecoin vs. Bitcoin tipbots respectively: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20ms1i/if_we_want_a...

sp3326• 12 years ago

"Mining" is really solving a block. This means that your computer has verified all the transactions in the block and signed them. As a reward for keeping the transaction record secure, you get some coins. At first, the reward has to be large, to entice people to a new cryptocurrency. But over time, a secure network becomes valuable for itself, and the reward isn't necessary anymore.

GrinningFool6• 12 years ago

"Mining" is really solving a block.

Well.. kind of.

Mining is really thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people competing to try to solve the same block. The one machine to solve it first gets the reward. (or if in a pool, it's given to the pool.) Over and over again- in the case of dogecoin, once every minute or so. The GP's statement about it being a massive waste of resources is unfortunately true - that's a lot of electricity for any popular coin.

But over time, a secure network becomes valuable for itself, and the reward isn't necessary anymore.

Has this actually happened in any case? Logically if there is no value to be gained from maintaining the secure network (eg, 'mining' new transactions into blocks for confirmation), then many fewer people will do so. The fact that it's a secure network is great - but it doesn't seem enough to entice a critical mass of people to maintain it at a cost to themselves.

pkulak5• 12 years ago

I'm aware of what mining is. And you're not just signing a block. No one would be making custom ASICs and putting server farms near hydro-electric plants if all you had to do was sign a block. You're paying people to do useless work and it's silly.

LoganCale• 12 years ago

The primary function of mining is not creation of coins, but security of the network. Mining is the reward to make sure enough people do it that transactions don't become exploitable.

Zombieball• 12 years ago

I am very naive when it comes to the bitcoin and dogecoin protocols. However, my understanding was that mining is what keeps the currency running and you are actually validating transactions. For doing this work you are "rewarded" with coins. Not really a waste of resources if you are helping run something you support.

GrinningFool6• 12 years ago

The one miner who solves each block validates the transactions and receives the reward. For every other miner, it's wasted electricity.

seabee2• 12 years ago

I hate mining too but you need a decentralized method to keep people from subverting the decision-making process and give them an incentive to participate. I would love a more environmentally friendly method than proof-of-work but I fear you would have to compromise the decentralization aspect to achieve it.

pkulak5• 12 years ago

Proof of stake is more secure than proof of work, but the problem is that you have to give the new coins to the people with the coins, so it incentivizes hoarding just as much as deflation would.

krrrh• 12 years ago

You definitely don't need to be a Keynesian to believe that a bit of monetary inflation is a positive thing. It's quite likely that Dogecoin will still be very deflationary if the velocity of cash flow, transaction volume increase faster than the Ð5 billion/a being added annually. Not to mention lost private keys which essentially destroy related coins forever.

icebraining• 12 years ago

You definitely don't need to be a Keynesian to believe that a bit of monetary inflation is a positive thing.

In fact, Dogecoin's model is a real world implementation of Milton Friedman's proposal:

  “We don’t need a Fed,” Milton Friedman says, twirling a letter opener
  as he speaks. “I have, for many years, been in favor of replacing the
  Fed with a computer,” he adds. Each year, it “would print out a specified
  number of paper dollars” to augment the money supply. “Same number, month
  after month, week after week, year after year.”

aestra6• 12 years ago

Mining is designed to be a waste of resources. It is kept artificially hard to prevent someone from creating a billion sock puppets and overtaking the network for malicious reasons. To entice people to use their valuable computing power and electricity on an artificially hard problem there must be some incentive.

wmf• 12 years ago

Dogecoin is only semi-inflationary by accident, so it's not exactly an example of sound economic thinking. There are several altcoins that are aiming to be explicitly inflationary but this also eliminates the incentive for early adopters to hype them to the moon.

Proof of stake has been proposed as an efficient alternative to mining but it's not clear whether it will work.

ericnakagawa• 12 years ago

The cost of mining (mainly electricity) will trend towards zero. In the future mining will run on solar power.

The larger cost is the ecological toll underlying the production of the hardware.

arb99• 12 years ago

Unrelated to the story (only to the title) but I bet a sponsored tweet from some big celeb could cost more than that.

eg https://app.sponsoredtweets.com/tweeters

lotsoflove• 12 years ago

So generous

a-priori2• 12 years ago

Dogecoin is interesting. On one hand, it's all an elaborate joke and everyone involved knows it. On the other hand, it's got a higher transaction volume than its 'serious' cousin Bitcoin, and people occasionally use it to transfer significant amounts of money (e.g. here, and the Jamaican Bobsled Team).

The biggest problem a currency has to overcome is the network effect. It's damned hard to bootstrap a currency, to get people to start -- and continue -- to use it instead of some other currency. With conventional currencies, that's typically done by governments requiring taxes to be paid in it. This has the effect of basically guaranteeing that everyone also receives their income in it as well and makes it difficult for another currency to sneak in. Taxes basically anchor the national economy onto the national currency.

With crypto-currencies, that's not an option since there's no government to levy taxes. But Bitcoin did something similar through vices: the Silk Road and Satoshi Dice got people using Bitcoin and money into the economy because they wanted to use it for drug trafficking and gambling. Because both of those sites only accepted Bitcoin, and they're either illegal or highly restricted in the normal economy, they acted as an anchor to convince people to adopt Bitcoin and move money into and out of its economy. Once bootstrapped, it's now being used for other, more legitimate, purposes.

Dogecoin is bootstrapping itself in a different way, through indiscriminate tipping and charity. It's using this kind of frivolous spending as a way of getting its transaction volume up and bootstrapping exchanges between Dogecoin and Bitcoin and USD. I could see it moving up to micro-transactions of some kind -- something small, perhaps still a joke of some kind, but for transactions (i.e, receiving something in return) rather than donation. Who knows, maybe one day we all woke up, and without realizing it Dogecoin has gone from a joke, to a joke people use for real stuff around the edges, to a real currency with a joke around the edges?

trevelyan• 12 years ago

This is a very misleading comment. Dogecoin only processes about 0.3 percent of what Bitcoin handles daily, and is far behind in total number of daily transactions:

http://bitinfocharts.com/

a-priori2• 12 years ago

Ah, thanks, good point. Sorry, for that part I just went by what the linked article said about Dogecoin. :(

manofmeans2• 12 years ago

well for one that site's data is off. claims DOGE confirmation time is ~30mins. click through to the chart. shows confirmation times hovering around 1 minute. reward per block shown ~40k. way off. each block currently rewards 250k: visit http://dogechain.info/chain/DogeCoin and subtract subsequent outstanding amounts. 250k difference. those are just the ones i noticed immediately, i'm sure other data is wrong there too.

SunliMin2• 12 years ago

That link is incorrect. That data is on the wrong fork. Dogecoin is on 1.6, that is on 1.5(Dogecoin had a hard fork yesterday, the site hasn't updated the fork).

If you look at the actual data, Dogecoin is at 101.2% of it's daily volume, and if you go in $USD value, it is slightly over triple Bitcoins daily $USD trading.

untilHellbanned5• 12 years ago

https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and-more/8e4...

sambeau• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure Ellen's selfie tweet cost Samsung more than $11,000.

Most Expensive Tweet Ever Sends $11,000 To Kenyan Water Charity Via Dogecoin

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