Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency featuring a likeness of the Shiba Inu dog from the "Doge" Internet meme as its logo.

Dogecoin was created by programmer Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon, who hoped to create a fun cryptocurrency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. In addition, he wanted to distance it from the controversial history of other coins. At the same time, Jackson Palmer, a member of Adobe Systems' marketing department in Sydney, was encouraged on Twitter by a student at Front Range Community College to make the idea a reality.

After receiving several mentions on Twitter, Palmer purchased the domain dogecoin.com and added a splash screen, which featured the coin's logo and scattered Comic Sans text. Markus saw the site linked in an IRC chat room, and started efforts to create the currency after reaching out to Palmer.

Markus based Dogecoin on an existing cryptocurrency, Luckycoin, which features a randomized reward that is received for mining a block, although this behavior was later changed to a static block reward in March 2014. In turn, Luckycoin is based on Litecoin, which also uses scrypt technology in its proof-of-work algorithm. The use of scrypt means that miners cannot use SHA-256 bitcoin mining equipment, and that dedicated FPGA and ASIC devices used for mining are complicated to create.

Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6, 2013, unlike deflationary cryptocurrencies which have a limit on the number of coins that can be produced, there is no limit to how many Dogecoins can be produced, which makes it an inflationary coin. Dogecoin was initially to have a limit of 100 billion coins, which would already have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were allowing. In February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that that limit would be removed and there would be no cap, which should have the result of constant reduction of its inflation rate over a long time.