Will Ockenden reported this story on Friday, January 24, 2014 18:22:00

DAVID MARK: Seven weeks ago Dogecoin didn't exist. Now the virtual currency is worth $70 million and is showing no sign of slowing down. The crypto-currency, as they're known, is now the most popular internet-based money in existence, despite the fact it started as a joke.



The whole currency is based on a meme: an idea, often a picture, which is spread virally from person to person. In this case the meme is a dog - at least a picture of one - a Shiba Inu from Japan



Most of its popularity and value happened in just the last week as its users raised enough doges to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics.



Will Ockenden explains.



WILL OCKENDEN: Move over Bitcoin, there's a new dog in town.



JACKSON PALMER: I'm Jackson Palmer, born and raised on the Central Coast, just north of Sydney, and I've been living in Sydney for about five, six years now.



WILL OCKENDEN: He's also the creator of Dogecoin, the hottest virtual money on the internet. It started as a funny idea, but it's turned into the fastest growing currency in history.



JACKSON PALMER: If you were to sell every single Dogecoin that's in existence right now, that's been mined, you would get $70 million - which is just pretty crazy. And it started as a joke. But it's really grown into much more than that.



WILL OCKENDEN: Dogecoin has been described as a 'dog-based internet money. It's also the kind of story which comes along from time to time thanks entirely to the internet.



JACKSON PALMER: I wouldn’t call myself a nerd, but I'd call myself a geek, definitely. I love everything tech; I spend a lot of my time on the internet, I'll say that much.



WILL OCKENDEN: Dogecoin is going through a staggering rise in popularity. Only on the web can you create an entire currency that's worth nearly $70 million in less than two months.



It's a long way off the value of Bitcoin, which is now worth about $9.5 billion, but most of Dogecoin's value was added this week. Its community of 40,000 people decided to rally behind the idea of getting the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics.



(Excerpt from Cool Runnings)



WILL OCKENDEN: In the semi-fictional 1993 film Cool Runnings, one of the characters sells his car to get to the Olympics. In the non-fictional 2014, it's partly down to Dogecoin.



(Excerpt from Cool Runnings)



IRVING BLITZER: Is this some kind of joke?



(End of excerpt)



WILL OCKENDEN: Well, yes, according to Jackson Palmer. He says that's one of the reasons for the currency's success.



JACKSON PALMER: I was sitting with my friend who's also involved in this the other night, and he runs the Dogecoin Foundation, and we're just sitting there thinking, you know, in five years from now we're going to be able to say: 'Remember that time we helped create a digital currency and then funded the Jamaican bobsled team going to the Olympics?'



It's kind of a strange story, but I have to pinch myself kind of every day.



WILL OCKENDEN: A crypto-currency is like everyday currency, but instead of being a physical means of exchange, it's virtual. The other vital difference is that there's no central authority to issue it. Instead it's decentralised, and transferred computer to computer.



Once it exploded in popularity after its launch, its creators lost control - its users now hold the power. Dogecoin holders have used it to build a growing culture of 'tipping' each other.



JACKSON PALMER: Dogecoin's being really used for these microtransactions, this tipping; and it's kind of being called now the 'internet currency'. So, people are… you know, when somebody posts a link, people are saying, 'Here, have 100 Doge, that's awesome'.



WILL OCKENDEN: Jackson Palmer says it also solves something that the internet has long needed: tiny transactions worth only a cent or two.



JACKSON PALMER: The internet has needed this. You know, it's needed a form of, you know, sending value, if you will, that's more than an upvote, more than a retweet or a like, you know. It's actually giving somebody back something because of the time they put into something, and if you can spend that on things that only exist on the internet in the future - so maybe you can download a song, right, from your favourite artist with Dogecoin - I think that's a really nice place for the currency to sit.



WILL OCKENDEN: While the entire currency is based on a fleeting joke, but Jackson Palmer is the first to admit its fall could be as fast as its rise. But he says as long as the currency and its users never take themselves too seriously, it'll endure.



JACKSON PALMER: I really believe in the community though, and it doesn't really show any signs of backing down. We're already talking around, you know, helping further charities. You know, we've helped the bobsled team, but we also want to look into things like, you know, helping charities that help dog shelters, service dogs, that kind of thing, because I really think the community wants to give back.



And one thing that I think Dogecoin has really achieved is it’s brought out the humble, nice side of the internet. The internet can often be a cold, mean place, where people just want to troll one another. But Dogecoin and the community that we've built has kind of… you know, like I said, there's 40,000 and growing of people on Reddit and there's more internet-wide - I think it brings out the best in people, and people are giving and caring about one another and being nice.



WILL OCKENDEN: Dogecoin's motto has become 'to the moon' after many in the community decided to use the currency to fund a probe to land on the surface.



Like the currency, it's a wild, entirely unlikely idea, but as the doge meme it's all based on would say: 'amaze. so lunar. such ambition. wow.'



DAVID MARK: Will Ockenden reporting.