In life, we often encounter some incomprehensible things. Especially in the social and cultural fields that are easily influenced by sensibility, such times are too numerous to mention.

The "Dogecoin" in the cryptocurrency market has become a symbol of the currency circle culture. The name of Dogecoin is taken from the Shiba Inu meme pack that was all the rage on the Internet in the early 2010s. The once-popular Shiba Inu (Dog) emoticon package imitation trend in the western online community has unknowingly become the "Doge" among the people in the currency circle, just like the "HODL" that the currency circle people say, and the popularity exploded instantly. Of course, it is also inseparable from the Shiba Inu's vivid expression.

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cannot be explained by rationale

In fact, it is difficult for people to explain the rise of Dogecoin with traditional stories or the rise and fall of other cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin is not regarded as the axis of all cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, nor does it function as a platform like Ethereum. Every time Dogecoin generates a block, it can generate 10,000 coins, and it will generate a block almost every minute, which is a token with a faster supply growth. Although the total development amount of Dogecoin was fixed at 100 billion in the early stage of development, it has now been changed to unlimited. This means that we cannot use the principle of supply and demand to explain the skyrocketing price of Dogecoin.

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With the rise of Dogecoin, the symbolic meaning of the Shiba Inu emoticon package is transferred to Dogecoin

If there is any principle behind the rise of Dogecoin, it is the popularity of "Shiba Inu Dog" itself. However, according to this logic, in the last few years of the 2010s, the popularity of Shiba Inu has dropped significantly, and the popularity of Dogecoin should not be the same as before, because the popularity of "Shiba Inu Emoji Pack" reached its peak in the mid-2010s, and Dogecoin In the last few years of the 2010s, it replaced the Shiba Inu emoticon package and became a "symbolic" existence. The global Dogecoin community also frequently uses Dogecoin to hold various fundraising activities. At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Dogecoin was used to sponsor the Jamaican bobsleigh team. In addition, many Dogecoin communities will also use Dogecoin to plan various sponsorship projects.

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The new normal brought by Dogecoin? Changing the Perspective on Tokens

The first thing that comes to mind in this Dogecoin incident is the basic economic principle. For most of the cryptocurrencies whose concepts of tokens and development companies and project entities are relatively clear, investors will use basic economic principles to predict the development prospects of tokens. For cryptocurrency exchanges, users will be measured by factors such as transaction volume, currency holding rate, and the quality of tokens on the line. However, Dogecoin was born from the fun of "Shiba Inu Emoji Pack" from the very beginning, and the economic principles behind it are very abstract, and the only thing that can be quantified is the community size. However, due to the cultural significance of the Shiba Inu meme itself, the size of the community may suddenly shrink or expand without any regularity. In other words, Dogecoin has been easily influenced by abstract factors such as culture since its inception.

Reverse thinking, we can use the Dogecoin phenomenon to promote the "tokenization" process of the real society. For example, the tokenization of the recent booming stock market. In the author's opinion, the Dogecoin example can be applied to some theme stocks in the current stock market whose prices deviate from market economic principles. Especially thematic stocks that are as vulnerable to social and cultural brands as Dogecoin.

JOIND Reporter Park Sang-geol park.sanghyuk@joongang.co.kr

JOIND Reporter Park Sang-geol park.sanghyuk@joongang.co.kr