DOGECOIN, a cryptocurrency set up as a joke, now has a total value of $1 billion.
Dogecoin cryptocurrency goes through the roof despite being set up as a JOKE
The parody coin was named after an internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog and had largely been forgotten about since its heyday in 2014.
However over the last month the cryptocurrency’s price has skyrocketed, rising by more than 400 percent, hitting an all-time high above $0.01.
The surge in dogecoin’s price drove its market valuation to $1.17bn earlier today - trading at $0.010360 per token, according to CoinMarketCap.
Last month, the virtual coin rose more than 400 percent and briefly topped $0.0107 in late December.
Despite dogecoin’s meteoric rise ,the coin’s creator Jackson Palmer, who left the team in 2015, has expressed concern about market excess.
Mr Palmer told CoinDesk: "The fact that most conversations happening in the media and between peers focus on the investment potential is worrying, as it draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based [on].
“I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap.”
The total value of cryptocurrencies is over $750 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, and bitcoin dominates nearly 40 percent of that market.
