Unlike the case with many other cryptocurrencies, the founders of dogecoin didn’t launch a public sale or “premine” coins prior to the token’s launch. Instead, a total supply limit of 100 billion coins was set and anyone with a laptop or smartphone could begin mining doge immediately.
What was also unique about dogecoin was its block reward schedule. Copying another project’s schedule called LuckyCoin, doge block rewards were completely random, meaning miners could receive anything from 0 to 1 million doge for mining a single block. The range of coins ailable for block rewards was tapered every 100,000 blocks until 2014 when the project’s founders decided to change the block reward system to a fixed schedule. After that point, successful miners received 10,000 doge per block for their efforts.
Despite dogecoin’s immediate popularity among early crypto users, it experienced only two short-lived big price jumps during its first almost four years in the market. The first took place almost immediately after the token went live, when its price soared 1,061% in 15 days from $0.0002 to $0.0023. The second big hike took place in March 2017 during the early stages of a crypto bull market. Doge’s price rose by 1,494% to a peak of $0.004 – the highest price it had been since launching.
While many other digital assets continued to rise through the second quarter of 2017, doge prices fell below $0.001. It wasn’t until November 2017, when doge’s price found support again from bullish investors. By January 2018, doge’s price reached a peak of $0.018.
It took over three years for doge to reach that level again, after it experienced a prolonged period of low trading activity as hype for the token waned. Renewed interest spurred by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other celebrity supporters at the start of 2021 sent doge’s price surging past its previous all-time high. The coin posted a 9,884% gain between January and May. By the end of the rally, doge had peaked at a new all-time high of $0.74.