Jamaica's cash-strapped bobsled team should be able to make it to the Olympics this year thanks to some unlikely donors. At the head of the pack is Reddit's community of Dogecoin enthusiasts, who have collected over $30,000 worth of their virtual currency and are currently in the process of transferring it into liquid, stable cash that can be sent over to the team.

Three fundraisers have collected around $56,000 so far

Two crowdfunding campaigns have also quickly raised thousands of dollars, with a Crowdtilt campaign approaching $20,000 at the time of writing and an Indiegogo campaign— run in part by Jamaica's bobsled team itself — just passing $6,000. That's around $56,000 altogether; perhaps a small sum for an Olympic team, but enough to get Jamaica's bobsledders to Sochi: they've only been looking for between $40,000 and $80,000.

Though donating directly to the Jamaican bobsled team's PayPal account or Indiegogo campaign may have been the safest and simplest option for support, Reddit's Dogecoin community was also hoping to gain some publicity for its digital currency through the fundraiser. Many of the fundraiser's most popular comments remark on how much good press it will bring, while others hoped that Jamaica's bobsledders would wear the currency's insignia or namedrop it during interviews.

Dogecoin's community has certainly proven that it's willing to invest in the currency, but it still remains far behind alternatives such as Bitcoin in ease of use and value. Buying and exchanging Dogecoin still requires transferring through Bitcoin first, and a single unit of Dogecoin is still significantly less valuable than a single unit of Bitcoin: though over 26 million doge was collected for the Jamaican bobsledders, that only adds up to 35 bitcoin.