Newegg, an online electronics retailer from which I bought the parts to build the computer that I am writing this article on, is now accepting payments in Dogecoin.
(Aside: Thank you Newegg for refunding my lemon motherboard with no fuss.)
What is Dogecoin? There are people far better qualified to explain it than me. In short, Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was created in 2013. Long thought of as something of a meme or joke, it has dramatically increased in value over the past few months.
My friend has been following Dogecoin-related developments for fun. We had a humorous exchange on the subject. Below, I will reprint a version of the exchange. While not verbatim, the contents capture exactly what was said.
Friend: Have you been investing in Dogecoin?
Me: Baka. I’ve been mining Dogecoin.
Friend: How’s that going?
Me: Poorly. I need Dogecoin to buy a video card for mining. Have you seen video card prices lately? For that reason, my mining rig is a bit lacking.
This conversation occurred a couple of weeks ago. Little did I know that Newegg would soon be accepting direct payments in Dogecoin. I mean I did know. I predicted the future with my joke.
Aside – it is true that the prices of video cards have spiked lately. I was lucky to purchase my card shortly before the price jump. Something similar happened with my previous computer build in 2011. For that computer, I purchased a hard drive (solid state drives were still a bit cost-prohibitive). I think that I spent about $60-65 on a 1 TB, 7200 RPM drive. Not too long after I purchased the parts, floods in Thailand caused hard drive prices to spike dramatically.
Let no one say I do not have good timing on computer parts. But perhaps it can be said on Dogecoin.