I don't see anything particularly unique about all of this. They buy dogecoin because they value the dogecoin more than the asset they're using as payment. That's how all purchases and trades work. You're just pointing out that the reason people value dogecoin more than the money they spend for it has to do not with something "essential," like buying food to stay alive, but rather for entertainment. The way you phrase things is making the concept sound more unusual than it actually is.

Crypto currencies, like Dogecoin are intrinsically more divisible.

If someone made a funny comment on the internet, and i wanted to reward them.

In 2012, I might "like" or "upvote" their comment -- a subjective measure of appreciation.

In early 2013, I might "give gold" or "gild" comments or posts I like on reddit.

In 2014, I'll probably just give some Doge, or whatever the new popular currency is (which I can easily buy with my other altcoin/currencies online). I can also give more or less based on how much I want.

This wouldn't work with pennies or USD because 100 Doge still __feels__ like a lot -- even though it's some fraction of a penny.

For a long time, people would give each other "internets" to reward what they like. The only difference now is that you can buy internets with real money, and they retain at least some quantitative value.

I think the point is that people do not buy Dogecoin because it's fun in itself but because it's the currency of fun, in other terms, their currency. "Their" meaning "a slice of the population" as a country is a slice of the population too. "Before", currencies were determined by geopolitic, now it's up to the people proximity in the wider sense. It's not happened yet but that's what the success of Dogecoin suggest.

Think of who is in the 1% of a country's wealth--a mix of capitalists who were good at acquiring that currency and folks who inherited it. In the cryptocurrency world, the moneyed are the creators, the miners and in the case of dogecoin, the creative-meme class who serve as a marketing arm. Many of them are in it for the lulz, and consequently have great upside with little downside, since it will always retain an intrinsic value as a karma proxy. The speculators may inadvertently make real-world millionaires out of this class.

It would not surprise me at all in the next year to see companies with large social subcultures at least attempt to launch their own cryptocurrencies, or extend their in-game currencies to become linked to a cryptocurrency.

Emergent decentralized currencies address both – and might also improve centralized-proprietor currencies by competition and precedent. (Proprietors will accept more community input, and win greater tolerance from governments, because of pressure from alternatives.)

The thing to watch for: when another online community embraces the dogecoin tipbot culture. That would be a strong indicator of long-term stickiness. The OP joked about having no /u/dogetipbot on HackerNews, but that's exactly the kind of feature that I suspect will start turning up in a number of communities.

With regard to games, Valve hired an economist some time ago. I'd love to see if they have anything planned with regard to innovating in this space. Could you have an in-game currency backed by a cryptocurrency?

This is where recognising a distinction between investing and speculating comes in handy. It's quite possible to speculate in dogecoin (relying on greater fools coming after) in the short term and make some money. In the long term it is extremely unlikely to have any value at all, so if you take investment to be long term search for value, the answer to should I invest is no.

The interesting thing about fiat (all our currencies at this point, including crypto ones, unless you want to quibble over semantics), is that it depends on confidence for its value. Without confidence it is worth nothing (Assignats, Zimbabwean dollars etc). This realisation doesn't give me great confidence in Bitcoin or any of its spin-offs though. It's an interesting experiment and noteworthy, but I think fatally flawed as a currency or an investment because of the explicit rejection of verified identity, regulation, and inflation and its attempts to emulate paper cash.

Perhaps the next currency to emerge will be corporate sponsored rather than state-sponsored, as corporations are still rising in power over states, but it will be a very interesting century, because most of the national currencies probably won't survive it, and by 2100, no-one will be using physical tokens for payments (cash). States will naturally resist any encroachment on their power over currency and taxation, which up to now has been absolute. I expect any stateless currencies which do manage to rival say the USD to come under heavy pressure from both speculators like Soros, and currency blocs who perceive a threat to their monopoly on trade.

It's friendliness means it may be adopted by the majority of consumers, who are scared off by the volatility and high price of bitcoins.

What needs to happen? First, it needs to distance itself from the meme part of it, and just become the standard fun, digital currency. Second, the barriers to entry need to be reduced. That means buying DOGE with USD instead of bitcoins, and easy online wallets. Finally, it needs uses, the most likely to happen are inter-app payments, such as over reddit or imgur.

What about celebrity-sponsored? "Buy his next album in Bieber-coin."

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/pop-culture-cash-by-james-...

The people actually investing in dogecoin are doing so because they believe the price is going to go up, the same as people who invest in anything else. They will lose or gain money depending on whether they are right or wrong.

If someone were to ask me if they should invest in joke-a-day calendars, then the obvious answer is, unless you are interested in getting in the business of printing joke-a-day calendars, or selling them, then no, joke-a-day calendars are not an "investment".

Keep in mind that mediums of exchange can be seen as purely "any mechanism that can signal the irrevocable transfer of the value". The innovation btc brings to this is instead of transferring physical items you create cryptographic hashes that you then publicize.

It's worth noting that when we talk about money we're trying to describe emergent phenomena. This is what we've got, and the following items are just useful ways of thinking about the issue - except unlike in physics we don't have the leeway to conduct careful, repeatable experiments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_of_exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_account

I forget the (accounting/financial) term for talking expenditures like videogames or movies or haircuts. I'm pretty sure we can describe those all as "services" but I've yet to find the appropriate wikipedia article. If someone can jog my memory that'd be great.

Disclaimer: I possess Dogecoins