There are over 132 billion Dogecoin (DOGE) tokens in circulation as of December 2022, and over a million new tokens are minted every day. Dogecoin doesn’t have a supply cap — unlike Bitcoin, for example, which has a limit of 21 million coins — meaning that an unlimited amount of tokens can be minted and released to the public. This setup provides miners with more opportunities to earn rewards, but it also leaves the price more susceptible to inflation risk in the long term.
How are Dogecoin tokens produced?
Dogecoin uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, meaning that tokens are minted and released to the public through an energy-intensive process called mining. Miners use specialized computers to solve complicated math problems that validate blocks of transactions and generate new coins.
Dogecoin adds a new block to the chain every minute of the day, with 10,000 DOGE in each block (worth over $700, based on December 2022 values). At this rate, 1.44 million new Dogecoins are minted and released to the public daily.
How does Dogecoin’s supply affect its price?
While its market cap is currently over $10 billion, Dogecoin’s ever-growing supply of tokens being minted each day has contributed significantly to its low price, which is generally well under a dollar. Even when the price of Dogecoin has surged (Dogecoin reached an all-time high of 74 cents in 2021), these price spikes are typically short-lived due to its large and ever-growing supply.
Dogecoin basics
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2013 by software engineer co-founders Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus. Widely considered to be the first meme coin, Dogecoin was created as a lighthearted joke alluding to a popular internet meme of a shiba inu.
Dogecoin’s functionality is similar to other cryptocurrencies — it was built using blockchain technology and is intended primarily to be used as a form of payment for its users. Cryptocurrency in general is considered to be a volatile market, and Dogecoin is no exception. Dogecoin’s price has been prone to extreme fluctuations in value — and one of the reasons behind the crypto’s volatility is its unlimited supply.
Dogecoin’s future
While Dogecoin remains in the top 10 most popular cryptocurrencies, its future is largely uncertain. Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin have been widely criticized for the large amount of energy consumed by cryptocurrency mining operations.
The average amount of energy consumed by each Dogecoin transaction is greater than the energy contained by nine fully charged Tesla Model 3 batteries, according to a 2022 study by Digiconomist, a platform that tracks energy consumption by different cryptocurrencies.
Earlier this year, the Dogecoin Foundation announced a partnership with Ethereum co-founder Vitalek Buterin in an effort to transition to a proof-of-stake operating system. Ethereum successfully transitioned from a proof-of-work system to proof-of-stake in an event called “the merge.” While this would greatly reduce Dogecoin’s carbon footprint, the foundation has yet to announce a date for when any changes might be implemented.
