Wow. Such story. Very excite. Many joyful: A good-natured, but nevertheless silly, internet campaign helped the Jamaican Bobsled team return to the Winter Olympics for the first time in over a decade. Here’s how an internet meme, a cryptocurrency, and a love for the underdog combined to give Jamaica another chance at a real-life Cool Runnings.

For those of you that watched the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a little treat came out of the recessed entrance towards end of the Parade of Nations: due to the order of the Russian alphabet, the small team from Jamaica emerged third-to-last to roaring applause, just two spots before the host nation’s hundreds walked into the stadium.

This was Jamaica’s Winter Olympics team: a two-man bobsled team that is representing the tropical island country in the Winter Olympics for the first time since the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. According to the New York Times, the Jamaican bobsledders have now gained some celebrity at the games, and are responsible for enhancing the mood of the “entire bobsled community” in Sochi. Of course, the cult Disney movie Cool Runnings — about the Jamaican Bobsled team’s unintuitive entrance into their first Winter Olympics in 1988 — helps the team’s popularity as well.

However, the top Jamaican bobsledder, Winston Watts, and his brakeman Marvin Dixon may not have made it to the Sochi Olympics, which is the first time in a long time that Jamaica has qualified for the games, except through the kindness, and silliness of strangers. The team had to raise enough money — initially $40,000 — to get to Russia and compete there.

Dogecoin Donations

The movement to fund the Jamaican bobsled team began on Reddit, when a foundation representing a cryptocurrency that began as a joke kicked off a fund-drive.

The foundation was the Dogecoin Foundation — dedicated to the online currency based on a meme that everyone loved to hate in 2013, Doge. Doge is a purposely-misspelled internet term for a meme based on the interior monologues of dogs.

Most “doge” memes feature a picture of a Shiba Inu with ironic reaction phrases written with intentionally incorrect syntax, usually in the universally-derided comic sans font. Doge blew up in popularity in 2013, but by the end of the year was officially declared “dead” by several influential internet sites. If you don’t understand the (anti-?) humor involved with Doge, just chalk it up as another wacky “Internet thing.” Here’s an example of a doge meme for LinkedIn users:

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency based on the Doge meme: a “very currency” that’s similar to Bitcoin introduced in late 2013.

It was the Dogecoin Foundation that began the fund-drive — in Dogecoin — to get the Jamaican bobsled team there.

Soon after the Dogecoin fund drive for the Jamaican bobsled team was announced onReddit, over 27 million Dogecoins were raised from over 1,500 Dogecoin users in a few days — which equals about $30,000 in real money. Enthusiasm to ensure that the real-life sequel of Cool Runnings happened grew, and soon other crowd-funding campaigns were launched.

By the end of all the campaigns, nearly $178,000 (real money) was raised to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Olympics with brand-new equipment. It was so much that the Jamaican bobsledders had to politely ask fans to stop donating: “We are not greedy,” Watts said to the NYTimes. “Our fans were amazing and we are here and we have better equipment. We are happy.”

The two-man bobsled competition starts Feb. 16 and there’s no doubt that the team’s Dogecoin supporters will be “very excite, many happy, such uplifted. Wow.”

If after reading this fascinating article you want to join the community send your email address or subscribe to this blog and ill send you some free dogecoin !!!

To donate some doges send them to this address: DQJwL1A2LLEKemYsAxNxcYW88WbNA1C8Bk thank you!!

Original article fund here …