Fresh from its success sending Jamaica's bobsled team to the Winter Olympics, Reddit's Dogecoin community has raised 67m Doge, worth £33,000, to send a car to the iconic Talladega Superspeedway Nascar race.

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency which was born out of a combination of the original digital money, bitcoin, and the Doge meme, which features photos of a baffled yet placid Shiba Inu with broken English written in multicoloured Comic Sans over the top.



The sponsorship fundraiser began when members of Reddit's Nascar community identified up-and-coming driver Josh Wise as an underdog in need of financial support.

The group appealed to the Dogecoin community for help, and after an eight-day fundraising drive, 1,200 donations averaging $41 were enough to sponsor his car, covering it in images of dogecoin and the Reddit alien. Moolah, a cryptocurrency payment platform, offered to convert the donations to US dollars at a favourable exchange rate, ensuring that the whole $55,000 raised could be spent.

"I can't thank the dogecoin and Reddit community enough for the support," said Wise, before quoting what has become an unofficial slogan of the Dogecoin community: "To the moon!"

Named the "#98 Moonrocket", the car will make its debut on May 4th at the Aarons 499 Sprint Series Cup Race.

Dogecoin hit headlines in January when the same community raised $25,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the winter olympics. Since then, it has also has raised $20,000 to train service dogs for children with disabilities, and collected $30,000 to build clean water wells in Kenya.

• This article and the headline were amended on 28 March 2014 to correct the exchange rate used to convert the dogecoins to dollars.

• It's bobsleigh time: Jamaican team raises $25,000 in Dogecoin