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At the peak of the meme’s popularity near the tail end of 2013, Palmer, an Australian marketer for one of the world’s largest tech companies, made a joke combining two of the internet’s most talked-about topics: cryptocurrency and Doge. It was a joke taking aim at the bizarre world of crypto and bitcoin’s multiple derivatives.
“Investing in Dogecoin,” Palmer tweeted, “pretty sure it’s the next big thing.”
The situation got worse. An ex-girlfriend of Green got in contact with Palmer and other members of the Dogecoin community. She revealed that Green was actually Ryan Kennedy, who was notorious in the UK anime community for running companies terrifyingly similar to Moolah.
Moolah received over 0,000 from the Dogecoin community, across three separate rounds of investment.
At one point Dogecoin was worth billion. It’s difficult to make sense of that.
“But when someone puts ,000 in? That makes me really, really uncomfortable.”
Below him: a tremendous crowd. The overwhelming blare of engines. Hurtling round at tremendous speeds: the #98 Moonrocket, a high-performance racing car. No different from the other cars on the track, except for one crucial detail.
“Ryan Kennedy convinced his victims they had no choice but to do as they were told,” said senior prosecutor Ben Samples. “He was emotionally, sexually and physically abusive, putting his needs above all else.”

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“It was moving at light speed,” explains Markus. “Within minutes we were like, ‘Wow, this is way out of our control.”
Chris Graythen / Getty Images

The next big thing

“I was like, ‘Quick we need to get back to our computers,'” laughs Palmer.
And then it all came crashing down.
If a user posted something to the effect of, “hey ‘dogebot’ tip this person five dogecoin,” that Reddit user would automatically receive five Dogecoin. People were sending Dogecoin back and forth in a feel-good exercise that cost very little money in real-world terms. The cryptocurrency community didn’t really get the joke.
“I hope people see Dogecoin and say, I’m not going to put all my money into this. Because right now there’s a dog on a coin and it’s worth half a billion dollars.””Dogecoin,” says Markus, “from ‘that seems like it’s funny’ to actually doing it, took about three hours. It’s almost trivial to create a new cryptocurrency.” 
The Dogecar, in all its glory.

Markus decided to bail on Dogecoin.

Markus, watching from afar, wasn’t a fan.
If you mined Bells, there was no telling whether the reward would be one Bell or 500 Bells.

“People were just trashing it,” laughs Markus, who quickly discovered there was very little crossover between crypto-obsessives and gamers.
Ctrl+F ‘Bitcoin,’ replace with ‘Dogecoin.’
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Reddit users were sharing Dogecoin back and forth constantly, which expanded the user base of Dogecoin and, as a result, increased its value as a cryptocurrency.
But it was the Reddit “tipping bot” that drove Dogecoin into the stratosphere.

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“We thought it was this big joke that would die off,” laughs Palmer.
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The bell tolls

Suddenly the UK police were involved. After a three-year investigation, Kennedy faces multiple charges of fraud and money laundering. At a preliminary hearing in Bristol Crown Court on September 2017 he denied all charges. A request for comment was sent to Kennedy’s Defence Lawyer, but we’ve yet to receive a response. 
When Palmer didn’t immediately respond to Markus’ offer to help build Dogecoin, he started working on it anyway.
On the bonnet of the car: a dog. A Shiba Inu, more commonly known as a “Shibe,” the dog made famous in the Doge meme that was popular in 2013.

“Alex Green started building his business on top of Dogecoin,” says Palmer.
He surveys the scene.
Ryan Kennedy is currently serving an 11-year sentence in a UK prison.

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Palmer describes it as “PayPal for cryptocurrency.” From the very beginning, Palmer was cynical.
Run by a British man calling himself Alex Green, Moolah was a cryptocurrency exchange designed to help people buy and sell Dogecoin. They infiltrated the Dogecoin community with startling efficiency.

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Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ctrl+F bitcoin

So Palmer and friends stumbled home from the pub, picked up a six-pack of beer for good measure and set about figuring out how to send 26 million Dogecoins to the Jamaican bobsled team.

“I just passed the glass to someone else.”
“I was really uncomfortable,” remembers Markus. “I said, ‘whatever’s going on here I just don’t want any part of it.'”
And that terrified Markus.
Emblazoned on top: the word “DOGECOIN” in all caps. Below: “digital currency”.
But Kennedy had to answer to more serious, disturbing crimes. In May 2016, he was tried and convicted on three counts of rape with three separate women. According to press reports he smiled as he was being led from court.

Moving at light speed

The community loved it. Soon Moolah began hiring people from the Dogecoin community for key positions in the company.
“Dogecoin is an easily replicable coin,” Lee said. “I don’t know how it distinguishes itself from Bitcoin. I really think it has to do with being established early.
“I liked it,” says Markus. “At the time, Dogecoin wasn’t worth anything, but getting five Dogecoin felt better than getting two cents.”
But then Markus read Palmer’s message on Dogecoin.com. That was the moment Billy Markus decided to come out of crypto retirement.
“We wanted to create something that was a force for good,” explains Palmer.

Markus freely admits to finding large chunks of bitcoin’s source code completely incomprehensible, but knew enough to change a few core elements for Dogecoin. For example, Markus created 100 billion dogecoins (as opposed to bitcoin’s 21 million) and made them easier to mine. (Dogecoin is already close to being mined out, while bitcoin’s final coin will be mined in 2140.)
What problem did Dogecoin solve?

Palmer describes the situation using words like “crazy,” “surreal” and “nuts.” He remembers this moment as a “reality check.” Dogecoin was a tweet, then it was a cryptocurrency worth money in the real world. Six months later, he watched as a joke that he’d made in passing somehow manifested itself into something tangible. A Dogecar in full flight.