Things in the alternative digital currency ecosystem got a little more interesting this week. Let’s take a look at some of the noteworthy news items from the last seven days in the altcoin world.

Dogecoin enters the limelight

Follow the Coin announced that it is partnering with dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer on Dogecon SF in San Francisco on 25th April.

This convention brings an interesting array of speakers and attendees, including litecoin creator Charlie Lee and Dogetipbot co-founder David Dvorak. The event aims to highlight the charitable aspects of the community, and there will be food, fun, costume contests and, of course, shibes as far as the eye can see.

In other dogecoin-related news, US-based digital currency exchange CoinMKT launched a DOGE/USD trading pair.

Blackcoin breaks out

Blackcoin had a banner weekend, experiencing a dramatic price increase and subsequent fall that still represents a significant increase in the altcoin’s value compared to a week ago.

After spending several days in the 0.00009 BTC range, the price of a single blackcoin began to rise quickly on 12th April.

The price peaked on 14th April, reaching 0.00094505 BTC on the MintPal digital currency exchange. Within hours, prices declined to roughly 0.00019000 BTC. MintPal’s 24-hour volume approached 10,000 BTC, causing the need for emergency server upgrades at the time.

At press time, the price of a single blackcoin was fluctuating between 0.00035 and 0.00039 BTC.

Limecoin community lends a hand

IPO-structured scams have become increasingly prevalent in the past few months on the Bitcoin Talk forum and other public forums for digital currencies. A recent scandal involving edgecoin – which involved an IPO for early investors prior to launch – resulted in some unexpected charity from another alt-community.

On 17th April, the limecoin development team announced on Bitcoin Talk that it would donate 500 LIM to anyone who could verify themselves as an investor in edgecoin:

“We understand this is a small amount of currency compared to what many of you invested in edgecoin, and we apologize that we do not have the funds to do more. We are trying to help in any way we can. We encourage other coins to please do the same.”

Strange alt of the week

This week’s “Strange Alt of the Week” is actually shared between two candidates which are set for a twin launch on Easter Sunday.

GirlCoin (sign: GIRL) and BoyCoin (sign: BOY) are being pitched as two coins of the same side. Each scrypt variant sports a 10 billion coin maximum supply limit and will have their own independent wallets.

The community response seems to be one of mostly amusement, although it will be interesting to see how mining hashrates divide between the two coins.