Dogecoin was originally conceived as a joke featuring a popular Shiba Inu dog meme. The community soon grew with members referring to themselves as " shibes " .
The first hack happened not too long after the cryptocurrency was launched. About 21 million dogecoin, which at that time was equal to about $12,000, were stolen from Dogewallet. The community, determined to keep the joke alive, raised money amounting to what was stolen from the web wallet to recompensate the victims of the hack. " Such Generousity, Wow!"
The founder of Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, like other shibes, was ever so confident in the moon trajectory that the community had set, he rejected $500,000 investment proposals following early discussions with at least two VC firms. Although a large part of the growth came from the community, accepting investment would have however assisted in the further growth of the currency. His belief that Dogecoin is best left solely as a community-driven entity, may have been a reason why the currency slowly started to lose traction as time passed with no upgrade and other innovative coins coming in shortly after to offer great competition in the crypto industry.
A largely contributing factor to the growth in dogecoin was the creation of the dogetipbot which allowed subscribers to tip each other with dogecoin. Shibes threw large amounts of dogecoin at each other with little regard since the coin was initially worthless at that time.
Later that same year however, greed struck and Mohland, the founder of the dogetipbot decided that the free service offered by bot could be turned into a succesful business. The company named Wow Such Business Inc was created as a result and ... as expected, the company failed resulting in Mohland's declaration of bank-ruptcy. To deal with his debt, Mohland decided to completely empty out all dogecoins held by the dogetipbot's subcribers. Mohland then playing the wounded puppy; added the option to let him keep the dogecoins he had already stolen or the dogetipbot users could get an IOU for their vanished coins some time in the future.
Another incident, this time involving the founder and CEO of Moolah, a dogecoin exchange startup, had the community taking another hit. The founder of Moolah came into the community under the guise of Alex Green, an entrepreneur wanting to make buying, selling and trading dogecoin easier. He threw around dogecoin, and not just a couple dollars worth here and there via Twitter and Reddit, but tens of thousands of dollars at dogecoin meetups. During that time, Kennedy raised somewhere around $750,000. Not too long after, over 1100 BTC were reported missing from Moolah. Further investigations led to presented evidence that Alex Green was the well known internet scammer Ryan Kennedy also known as Ryan Gentle.
As if having endured enough, the founder Jackson Palmer announced his absence from the crypto community. He however urged that shibes (users of dogecoin) should try not to lose sight of its fun and playful roots.
Though dogecoin weathered the storm against a number of fraudsters and scammers, these unfortunate incidents undoubtfully scared the heart of a once vibrant community that it never really fully recovered from. Many abandoned the currency altogether while others became more suspicious and less generous with their coins. Dogecoin along with its once generous and fun community, slowly began to drift downhill.
We've learnt one important lesson though; that nothing in cryptocurrency can be all fun and games, not when money is involved! However; the spirit of Dogecoin will be kept alive by the true loyal shibes who remain optimistic that one day, dogecoin will go to the moon.
Sources: thenextweb, coindesk -1
,coindesk -2, bitcoinist , pinterest , motherboard , ACT, gizmodo .