The Jamaican bobsled team have qualified for the Winter Olympics and will be looking to crypto-currency Dogecoin to send them to Russia.

Famed for their 1988 Winter Olympics appearance and 1992 Cool Runnings film, the Jamaican bobsled team have qualified for this year’s Olympics for the first time since 2002 and are now in the process of raising the estimated US$40,000 to go to Sochi, Russia, for the Games.

In what can be argued as the least likely way of raising funds for the two-man team of Winston Watt and Marvin Dixon, the team behind Dogecoin, an off-shoot of the online currency Bitcoin, have already raised nearly US$25,000 already for the team through the online-forum Reddit.

Wow, such funds

Started by Liam Butler, Dogecoin follows the same design as Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer currency but uses the popular online meme of ‘doge’ which shows pictures of Shiba Inu dogs surrounded by misspelled or broken English phrases.

Speaking to The Guardian, Butler did not expect news of the currency to spread as fast as it has: “Myself and Jackson Palmer (the creator of Dogecoin) were at a local pub trivia in Sydney when we noticed the value of Dogecoin had more than doubled since we'd last checked so we raced back to my house to ensure we could get the best price for the donations in a form the team could actually use.

“As much as we have faith in Dogecoin to become the community currency of the internet, we still understand that the team need to buy their airfares in a fiat currency.”

The currency has skyrocketed in value in only a matter of days and continues to trade online so there remains hope that the bobsled team will receive more funding from the online community.