Hey, what ever happened to Josh Mohland, the brainy supergeek who ran for City Council in 2010? Oh, he’s probably in a garage somewhere, pushing ones and zeroes around at some tech startup with a funny name, maybe based on someone’s dog or something, and making a ton of money with some cryptic cyber-scheme...

Kevin L. Hoover

Mad River Union

ARCATA – Former Arcata City Council candidate and entrepreneur Josh Mohland’s cryptocurrency startup, Dogetipbot, just received $445,000 from an Australian venture capital firm.

Located in the Cooper Building on Samoa Boulevard, Mohland’s five-employee tech company, founded with business partner David Dvorak, is a fast-rising player in the emerging cryptocurrency industry, where one can earn and spend virtual money.

And yes, there’s a garage involved.

Incorporated as Wow Such Business, Inc., Dogetipbot’s slogan is, “We Let You Throw Change At People On The Internet.”

Among fast-rising cryptocurrency companies, Mohland’s has a specific and popular purpose – tipping commenters on online services Reddit and Twitch – hence the “tipbot” part of the moniker.

The first part of the name, “Doge,” derives from the misspelled name of a puppet dog in an online cartoon. Dogecoin was created by programmer Billy Markus in 2013.

“I just call it magical Internet money,” Mohland said, patiently trying to explain how his cryptocurrency works. “Basically it’s transaction processing. We see that as our core business.”

The average transaction is tiny. Sixty Dogecoins is worth just 3.5 cents. But it adds up, and it isn’t just for giving gold to good commenters.

Dogetipbot has spearheaded charity drives as well, with some $7,200 raised to benefit victims of last April’s bus crash involving prospective Humboldt State students. Another $50,000 was raised to help build water wells in Kenya.

Dogecoin cryptocurrency is perfectly legal, if immaterial. But it spends just like “real” money, which, while having physical tokens like bills and change, is based mostly on conceptual perception of value as well.

So how do you earn it? This is where the “crypto” comes in.

You jiggle Dogecoins loose from Mohland and company by, in a sense, hacking their servers. Actually, you “mine” it by by cracking the code that protects it, using specialized computers running algorithms specific to the task, known as mining software.

Power users run computers loaded with advanced graphic cards, which turn out to be optimized for this sort of cryptographic interrogation. One can go about “solving blocks” oneself, or pool your efforts (and share any resulting wealth) by adding your computer’s power to a group which operates jointly via distributed processing.

If you crack a block, Dogecoins are added to your virtual “wallet” to use as you please.

“Everyone wants to get that reward,” Mohland said.

That’s how Mohland got into it – running multiple computers to mine Litecons and Feathercoins, other forms of cryptocurrency. At one point, the racks of servers in his garage pushed the limits of Arcata’s Excessive Energy Use Tax aimed at grow houses.

That changed last year, when he had a notion to forge the tipbot model. He tried it and by the end of the first day, he had 500 users.

Last December, Wow Such Business was born.

Since then, Mohland’s magical Internet money has been spent by 72,000 users in three quarter-million transactions, an average of 7,000 to 10,000 tips a week.

“Basically, we took off,” Mohland said. “It’s been a massive ride.”

Mohland’s office is long, dark and quiet but for whirring computer fans and clacking keyboards. Furniture is minimal – just desks and chairs, with tangles of wires connecting computing devices on the hardwood floor. The west wall is a full-length mirror, on which proprietary and non-photographable business information and plans are scribbled in colored marking pen.

Right now, things on which to spend Dogecoins are limited. That will change as Mohland uses his latest cash surge to improve the user experience and add more online services where his currency can be used for micropayments.

“It gives us enough runway to go for another year or so, and really get the ball rolling,” Mohland said.

He’s already on a roll. Of the roughly two dozen cryptocurrency firms, Dogetipbot was described as “everyone’s favorite way to throw change at people on the Internet” by moneyandtech.com. Mohland said his company was the new hotness at the recent “Money 2020” convention in Las Vegas.

“It’s gaining traction,” he said. “Our platform is a lot more fun.”

That may be because, like so many other important historical inventions, Dogetipbot came about as a bit of a lark.

“People have been trying to figure our how to monetize online services,” he said. “Basically we just stumbled across it. Now we have a service that people are actually using.”