Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - WTF is Dogecoin?

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Crypto used to be confusing - but not anymore. In this episode, you’ll get the scoop on Dogecoin and why crypto is just like salt. Plus, Nicole answers the age-old question we’ve all had burning within us: “Dozh” or “Doggie”? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. By now you've likely heard of the cryptocurrency that started as a meme.

But before I give too much away, I hit the streets to ask people if they even knew WTF is this joke cryptocurrency? Why does Elon Musk love it so much? And how the F do you pronounce it? Dogecoin. Isn't that fake? I know it's like Bitcoin. I don't fully understand Bitcoin, but I do know that Dogecoin blew up. And apparently I saw a headline that if I put like $100 into Dogecoin now or at the beginning of the year

I could have purchased a house by now uh I've never heard of it Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that has a dog on it um okay I know it started as a meme and I don't know. I've heard Dogecoin. I've heard Doggycoin. I just try not to say it out loud, just in case. First things first, I don't care what you call it. I have heard it called Dogecoin and Doggycoin. I am just going to entertain myself and say DoggyCoin because I can. So what the fuck is DoggyCoin? So the consensus from my poll was that DoggyCoin is a joke. And believe it or not, this is kind of how it started out. The name DoggyCoin comes from a meme.

Seriously, a meme. Does the doggy meme ring a bell? It's the one with the fluffy Shiba Inu dog who looks surprised, or honestly how Raven looked in That's So Raven anytime she had a psychic vision. If it sounds like I'm speaking nonsense right now, you can see the meme on our Instagram at Money Rehab Show for a little visual experience. Here's what happened. Jackson Palmer, just a regular dude, created DoggyCoin in 2013. And he did create it somewhat as a joke. It was his response to the increasing interest in the darling cryptocurrency Bitcoin. At the same time, Bitcoin was gaining popularity

and public opinion was pretty split. Some were excited to have the brave new world of digital moolah, while others struggled to understand it. Is crypto real? Can it exist if it's not in the real world? Some pretty existential stuff. The origin story of DoggyCoin, though, is simply this. In a world with a bunch of money shared online, why not make a new coin in honor of everyone's favorite thing to share online? Memes! It's fair

to say that Jackson didn't really expect his coin was ever going to be grouped with the giant Bitcoin. Instead, early speculation assumed DoggyCoin would have a small, perhaps cultish following. And it did at first. And actually, early on, DoggyCoin was used in a very sweet and sometimes bizarre way. The other day I was reading in the New York Times about a philanthropic group within the DoggyCoin community called the DoggyCoin Foundation. Cool, right? The participants raised money for all sorts of causes like drilling wells in Kenya and pitching in for travel funds for Jamaica's two-man bobsled team to go to the Olympics and sponsoring service dogs for children with autism. It's nice, right? Now, let's look at the numbers.

Here's a fun fact about DoggyGoing that may surprise you if you're not too deep into the memes or the stonks. So Bitcoin's price, as of when we're recording, because it will change, is $59,520 a share. And can you guess what DoggyGoing's price is? Any guesses? Bueller? Bueller? 26 cents. Yep. You heard me right. 26 cents. Two dimes, a nickel, one penny. Compared to Bitcoin's tens of thousands of dollars. So all of this info paints the picture of DoggyCoin as a very adorable but perhaps not very legit investment. And yet, as of when we're

recording this, CoinMarketCap lists DoggyCoin as the seventh cryptocurrency by MarketCap, and MarketCap is just a fancy term for how the market is perceiving the value of a stock. You may be thinking, how is something that is worth 26 cents making the cut as one of the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies? Well, within the first few weeks launching in 2013, it was valued at around 0.0003. That's less than three ten thousandths of a dollar. 26 cents might not sound like much, but when it's grown from three ten thousandths of one dollar, that's huge and honestly unexpected growth. This year alone, DoggyCoin's price has gone up more than 1,600 percent. And Elon Musk, who has to be the heartthrob of the crypto and tech space right now, like if crypto was the focus of a Tiger Beat magazine,

I'm just saying Elon would fucking be on that front cover. And Elon loves doggy coin. If you're skeptical, I don't blame you. But if you're skeptical because you don't think something outside of whatever's in your wallet can have value, well then try this on for size. Money is all about the meaning we give it, right? Money without meaning is just paper. And historically, we've been giving that meaning and therefore value to many, many things. Salt is my favorite example. Before refrigeration, salt was extremely valuable as a preservative. Say you were out in the Great Plains in the 1800s and you went to whoever was the trader joe of that town and you wanted to buy some cloth if you go up to trader joe with paper money

you're going to be competing against a customer who wants the same cloth but can give trader joe some salt sorry honey you are losing to salt bae every time. Because what you don't know is that Trader Joe has a hunk of buffalo in the back to feed his family for the winter, but no way to keep it stable. Trader Joe would have laughed at you and your silly paper money right out of his saloon and told you to come back when you had something valuable, like salt, baby. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money rehab will be right back. Now for some more money rehab. Okay, so ignore the specifics on that story. I may be having some little house on the prairie flashbacks, but the salt facts are absolutely true. Have you heard

the expression that someone is not worth their weight in salt? That expression comes from this time in history. The word salary actually comes from the word salt as well. Hill Harper and I actually talked about this on his Changemaker episode. There are plenty of other examples of things that used to be exchanged like we exchange dollar bills right now. Stones, squirrel pelts, cocoa beans, shells. So I can't have you dismiss doggie coin just because you don't think it can hold value. We, the people, ascribe value within our money systems. But you can dismiss doggy coin for other totally valid reasons. First of all, maybe it's a little too cute. The meme uses Comic Sans for God's sakes. Can you imagine paying the down payment on your first house with something inscribed with Comic Sans? Yes, fonts make me very emotional. Like Kanye West.

You can also be skeptical of DoggyCoin because there's some speculation that these new forms of crypto are creating a bubble. A bubble that will burst sometime in the future. Since DoggyCoin, a ton of other crypto startups have emerged. Some of these other new crypto startups have been a little sketchy, many of which I would not recommend money rehabbers touch with a 10-foot pole. In some cases, investing in these startups looks like investing in companies. And technically, when you invest in companies, you get stock in the company, right? That's the exchange. You're giving money and you're getting stock. But some of these crypto companies aren't giving stock in exchange for investment. They're not even giving the cryptocurrency in exchange for the investment.

In that same New York Times article I was talking about earlier, I read that some of these startups are giving investors tokens, basically coupons that grant access to data storage space or an admit one ticket to a new social media network, none of which, by the way, has any sort of value articulated to the investor or is even verified in any sort of way. No blue checkmark for these startups. If I had to guess, the value of these coupons is probably sitting at just about what we value salt at today. And need I remind you that you can find salt on the floor of any tequila bar that's, well, worth its salt. And yet these startups are raising millions and in some cases billions for their projects. While some of these ventures can be totally legit and real contributors to this interesting

new world of digital finance, some may just be scams. And with crypto being such a hot topic, no one wants to miss out on the next Bitcoin, am I right? Which is why people may be too quick to invest in these ventures that are just catfishes. Jackson Palmer himself is nervous, and he actually left DoggyCoin in 2015, citing a toxic industry. On crypto, he said, quote, The bigger the bubble goes, the bigger negative connotation it's going to have. It's going to be like the dot-com bust, but on a much more epic scale, end quote.

Remember the dot-com bubble? In the 90s, there was a huge frenzy around companies based in our beloved internet. Investors were worried that they would miss out on opportunities presented by internet-based companies. So they hurriedly invested without the data backing up whether those companies would be profitable. And in many cases, HelloPets.com, they weren't. Sound familiar? I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy doggy coin like you shouldn't have bought Pets.com. like you shouldn't have bought pets.com. At 26 cents per share, it can be a pretty low-stakes gamble to take. And for now, Doggy is actually mimicking the behavior of Bitcoin, so it's still showing signs of growth. Hey, I'm not investing in DoggyCoin anytime soon, but if it's for you, then get after it like a dog on a bone. But if this crypto bubble is real, it will burst at some point and leave the less legit

currencies behind. And to quote the doge meme, that's concern. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. If you're going to buy dogegy Dogecoin, you should commit to keeping up with the research and having your finger on the pulse of the crypto value trends. If doggy coin is part of the crypto bubble, it will burst at some point and you want to get out before it does. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hadikadur and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work.

producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all. the name doggy coin the name doggy coin this year alone doggy coins I'm crying. And to quote the... Why are we quoting fucking doggy weebs? Why? Why? Why? Keynes is like turning over in his economics grave. Okay. I can't breathe. Oh, it's doggy. Okay. I can't even say it.

Sorry. Okay. The name... I might need to say it the other way because it's too funny each time it comes up. the e-streaming comes up. You can also be skeptical about DonkeyCoin because it's fucking called DonkeyCoin. The end.