back to article Joke no more: Comedy virty currency Dogecoin gets real in big Xmas heist

If you've heard of Dogecoin, maybe you thought it was a joke. A cryptocurrency based on what has been called the meme of the year for 2013, it certainly has all the earmarks of an internet prank. But some people are apparently taking Dogecoin seriously – seriously enough, at least, to steal millions of them from online wallets …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So we've now got Shitcoin and Dodgycoin.

    Madoff would be doing something similar if he wasn't banged up.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Wow so greenback. Much Yellen! Such inflation. Wow.

      Well, the government would be doing something similar if ... oh wait ...

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: Wow so greenback. Much Yellen! Such inflation. Wow.

        Well, the government would be doing something similar if ... oh wait ...

        Except they get to get away with it, by actually printing & minting more of their *coins...

  2. ratfox

    I'm waiting for the FSMcoin

    I'm sure it's coming. And I'm not sure if it's going to be a joke or not.

    1. Swarthy

      Re: I'm waiting for the FSMcoin

      But the ultimate "Is it a joke, or is it real?" crypto-currency will be the DisCoindian currency: the Eris.

      It will be based off of the multi-placation of the squares of the factors of the Ursine primes...

  3. Chris Ashworth

    Bonkers yes, but I'm taking advantage by having a couple of new GPUs pay themselves off in a few weeks mining dogecoins.

    The internet is a strange place, but there are some opportunities to gain fron the madness.....

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Dogecoin is based on Litecoin, which (in theory) uses a Proof of Work called 'scrypt' that doesn't hand an advantage to GPUs or ASICs because of its high memory demands. However, 'scrypt' wasn't properly implemented, so your GPUs will still give you a speed boost.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        scrypt is designed to limit ASICs, not GPUs.

        A lot of silly altcoins around at the moment that people are making quick bucks on, but most likely Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin will endure in some useful form.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      GPUs pay themselves off in a few weeks mining dogecoins.

      They do??

      Who's stupid enough to buy millions of these coins off you?

  4. John Tserkezis

    Don't keep your money under your matress - it's not safe.

    Keep your money under OUR cloud-based mattres, much safer...

    1. Rukario
      Joke

      Re: Don't keep your money under your matress - it's not safe.

      > Keep your money under OUR cloud-based mattres, much safer...

      The mattresses are called banks. And they're really safe.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He took those coins to the moon...

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3oiThw2RxE

  6. Blofeld's Cat

    Hmm...

    English banknotes carry the inscription "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ... pounds", and at one time if you took a fiver into Bank of England they would give you five gold sovereigns in place of it.

    Perhaps these virtual currencies could be backed by some sort of virtual metal...

    Hang on a minute - who's had my El Reg Silver badge?

    1. Michael Habel

      Re: Hmm...

      First off the Bank of England has now Gold 'cause Gordon Brown sold it all....

      Secondly try going in with a Fiver to the Bank of England (or anywhere else with any other Currency for that matter), and demand Gold in place of it. And watch how fast they laugh you outta there Shop!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmm...

        "First off the Bank of England has now Gold 'cause Gordon Brown sold it all...."

        Yeah, and who suggested that would be a good idea to financial genius GB? And who suggested the sale be publicized in the way it was - guaranteed to lower the sale price? Some investment bank that had a sudden need for gold to cover a bet?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmm...

        What's left after Gordon Brown flogged off some of it on the cheap...

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/9734551/Inside-the-Bank-of-Englands-gold-bullion-vault.html

        And HM visiting the vaults...

        http://news.sky.com/story/1025189/queen-asks-bank-bosses-about-financial-crisis

        Anyone visiting London, consider

        Bank of England Museum

        http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/museum/visiting/default.aspx

        over tourist traps like Tussauds.

        (closed for refurbishment from 1st Jan to 28th March 2014)

        1. Cliff

          Re: Hmm...

          Wasn't just Brown, they were all at it, and 'cheap' is relative - in the past year golds lost a third of its 'value'. It has some useful engineering properties and is inherently resistant to corrosion and is easy to distinguish compared with white metals, but beyond that its value is largely fiat in itself.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm...

      English banknotes carry the inscription "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ... pounds", and at one time if you took a fiver into Bank of England they would give you five gold sovereigns in place of it.

      Hasn't happened for a long time (certainly not since we went off the "gold standard"). This was demonstrated on a TV program from when I was young called, ahem ... errm ... embarassed shuffle, ... "Jim'll Fixit" where some young child got to walk into the Bank of England to meet the Governor, hand him a £1 note and ask for her "sum of one pound" .... and the Governor explained that at one time she would have got £1's worth of gold but now he just gave her another £1 note in return (think to make it special it was a brand new unused note and the Governor autographed it underneath his printed signature on the note)

      1. Blofeld's Cat

        Re: Hmm... (A.C. 11:38)

        "...he just gave her another £1 note in return..."

        Yes, for many years now asking for your "pounds" has resulted in you being given another note of the same denomination - and a well-we-haven't-heard-that-one-before smile from the cashier.

        Gold sovereigns are still produced by the Royal Mint, but a 2014 one will cost you 450 quid.

        1. Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole

          Re: Hmm... (A.C. 11:38)

          Or about 1 BTC, as it happens.

        2. TheTick

          Re: Hmm... (A.C. 11:38)

          "but a 2014 one will cost you 450 quid."

          Find a different dealer chap, I get them for less than £200 at today's prices. Bullionbypost for example.

        3. Felix Krull

          Re: Hmm... (A.C. 11:38)

          Yes, for many years now asking for your "pounds" has resulted in you being given another note of the same denomination - and a well-we-haven't-heard-that-one-before smile from the cashier.

          I remember an anecdote; I can't vouch for its authenticity, it's probably an internet thing, but ostensibly there was this American employer who decided to pay his employees in specie dollars - old school gold coins. So the employees would be paid nominally only a couple of dollars per month and likewise, only pay income tax on the nominal value of gold coins carrying a specie value equalling several hundreds paper dollars.

      2. Throatwobbler Mangrove

        Re: Hmm...

        "Hasn't happened for a long time (certainly not since we went off the "gold standard"). "

        S/he knows that, which is why s/he wrote "AT ONE TIME if you took a fiver into Bank of England"...

    3. Fibbles

      Re: Hmm...

      It was a pound of silver, surely?

      Pound sterling and all that...

      1. Sir Sham Cad

        Re: pound of silver

        I think the origin of the name "sterling" came from our illiterate ancestors' name for a silver coin used by them wot conquered us in 1066. A quick wackypodia check tells me there were 240 of those from a pound in weight of silver.

        So, yes, I suppose at least by name you'd expect 2.578g of silver for your £1 sterling (or in real money 0.6138 MilliJub)

    4. Gary Bickford

      The 'Erg' standard

      I've casually argued for the use of the Erg, or kw hour, or some other measure of energy as a natural standard of economic value to replace gold. I'm not the first - I found a few papers from the late 1960s and early 1970s arguing for the same thing. First one must assume that a currency should be based on some objective store of value, of course - and that is not a 100% done deal, especially in today's dependence on manipulated currencies. But that's a separate argument.

      Energy has some natural advantages as an objective measure. The first, most obvious one is transferability - it is easy to measure almost anything in terms of energy. The amount of energy required to produce, maintain, ship, use, anything is relatively easy to measure, so the price of everything is closely related to its physical cost (other aspects would be rarity, and various intangibles like art value). Most usefully, demand for energy tends to match availability over time - as a general rule, economies have historically developed new energy sources at a rate that roughly matches growth and the demand for energy. So the price of everything in terms of energy tends to remain relatively stable, unlike gold. And unlike gold or other physical measures there is no fundamental problem with a fixed quantity being available. Finally, transfer of energy is much easier in general than transfer of tons of gold or whatever.

      So, given the assumption that fiat currencies are a failure, energy seems to be the best alternative. In reality, anything can be used as the measure - gold, silver, nicely carved rocks, wives, goats, camels have all been used as agreed measures. At present the price of light sweet crude oil is as close to a standard measure as anything - when oil prices rise, the cost of almost all goods also rises due to the ubiquity of impact on transportation, heating, electricity, etc. So it would be fairly natural to use a particular grade of oil. But (especially as we use more solar and other non-oil sources of energy, move into space, etc., oil becomes less and less attractive to everyone except the suppliers. The energy contained in the oil is a much better measure. The delivered price of oil in terms of energy would then properly a function of supply and demand, which would also include the cost of production, the value of scarcity (it will run out eventually), the cost of shipping, the cost of management and sales and so forth.

      Interestingly, in one of the papers from about 1970, the author argued that using energy as the standard would make nuclear plants uneconomic because, counting the energy used to build them including trucking, etc. and the energy used to decommission them and manage them into perpetuity, a nuke used more energy than it produced. I don't know if that was correct, I somehow doubt that the amortized costs would work out that way, and that was based on the then-prevalent plan to run a nuke 20 years and decommission it; so it's not at all plainly true. But it is indicative of how many economic equations might change given this standard. If a standard economic measure is a good idea, I don't think there is any better measure than energy (by some practical physical quantification).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The 'Erg' standard

        So could you take a Pound note to the Bank of England and get the Governor to do half an hour on an exercise bike?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    such coins!

    I noted with amusement the ticker for a currency called something like "stablecoin", which had been rocketing wildly up and down by thousands of percent multiple times per day...

    1. Anonymous IV

      Re: such coins!

      I'm sure someone, viz. me, can ascribe the wild perturbations of the so-called "stablecoin" to the actions of a bronco bucking, or a horse bolting after the door was left open.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I would like to emphasize that dogecoin can become a currency of charitable activities and altruism. Many of these efforts lean towards finding a way to facilitate donations to animal-welfare related charities. ‘Doge for Dogs’ is one project in development, which is the works to become a registered non-profit. You can find out more about this project and others at the subreddit linked below. There is also a twitter feed #dogecoincharity, which will keep current with news related to these activities. I co-moderate the subreddit and manage the twitter account. Expect to see us on FB very soon, as we are just getting things off the ground. We hope that you and others can help us promote dogecoin as a viable means of facilitating a spirit of giving, rather than simple profit. Once crypto-currencies become ubiquitous, and we believe they will, you might expect to see a smiling doge and a scannable OCR on a donation can (to your local animal shelter) on the counter of your local shop, facilitating instant donations—you can also expect to see more and more charities accept dogecoin donations via their webpages. There are already two, such as Sean’s Outpost, one of the 1st local charities in America to accept bitcoin to help the homeless. They are now accepting dogecoins which will aid homeless animals: http://seansoutpost.com/

    Also, in Spain there isAmigo Mio, which is a shelter/adoption center: http://www.amigomio.info/

    If you are interested please email us at dogecoincharity@gmail.com, check out our subreddit at http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoincharity/ and follow us on Twitter at #dogecoincharity. Your support in getting the word out is invaluable. Please note, we do not directly solicit donations of any kind. Cheers!

  9. lukewarmdog

    Doge

    Pronounced dodgy?

    And being managed on reddit? I'd rather bank with 4chan

  10. Lord Lien
    Coat

    Dogecoin is dead! Long live CoinYe West!

    "CoinYe West is the da newest bad ass currency on da web, yo hear me dogs!"

    Sorry I tried my dam hardest to be down with the youth of today..... My excuse is that I have failed to have my morning cup of tea & bacon sandwich. Mental note, NEVER attempt humor with out bacon!... EVER! :)

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