Dogecoin, the internet’s most popular (and perhaps only) for-fun cryptocurrency remains down by -14.60% as of 1:30PM CST today as part of a deflating start to the week. It follows a dizzying rise of 800% over the last month, making headline news as it became the first parody coin to break a $2 billion USD market cap. It peaked at $0.018 USD on Jan 7th, up from $0.002 USD from the same date last December. Dogecoin’s recent increase in value is likely linked to the large amount of attention garnered by Bitcoin (available on Coinbase) in the last few weeks.

The alternate cryptocurrency, birthed from the now-prehistoric ‘Doge’ internet meme, currently sits at $0.012 USD having shown some signs of recovery this morning. Dogecoin started off as a joke in response to Bitcoin (available on Coinbase)’s unprecedented success, but has since taken itself a little more seriously following attaining a market cap of over $1 billion USD. This puts it ahead of far more formal and business-oriented alt-coins such as Storm, Wax and Dentacoin. It is also among the cryptocurrencies with the largest circulation supply.

But many people are wary. The alt-coin market is infamously volatile, but at least some alt-coins have the added benefit of being linked in some way to private enterprise, such as Dentacoin is with the dental industry, or the RPX coin is to Chinese market analysis. This can be comforting, in that the coin’s value is partly driven by developments in the industry to which it is linked, rather than simply its own market price. In contrast, Dogecoin’s recent surge seems to be a case of people investing because people are investing, which is unsettlingly unpredictable.

Even Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer is warning people about taking Dogecoin investments too seriously. ‘I think it says a lot about the state of 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’, he said on Twitter. Labelling the current market as a bubble that will ‘inevitably’ burst, Jackson hopes that ‘the negativity in the market doesn’t stifle technological innovation,’ which he says is the ‘real goal’ of cryptocurrencies.

Still retaining its original mascot, Dogecoin now presents itself as ‘The fun and friendly internet currency’, encouraging its users to take part in its community and number of official and unofficial forums. It’s community has made big news in the past, at one point being used to raise tens of thousands of dollars in Dogecoin to fund a Jamaican bobsleigh team to compete in the 2014 Sochi winter olympics, as well as sponsoring NASCAR’s Josh Wise for $55,000 USD.

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