Joe Grand had to hack open a crypto wallet with a lost password and millions of dollars trapped inside.I mean, I'm an equal opportunity hacker.
Eileen Ormsby had to figure out if this internet hitman that was threatening her was the real deal.
They started tracking me down and sending me emails saying, stop saying that we're a scam, we're the real thing.And Merrill Goldberg had to encrypt secrets into sheet music to smuggle them across the Soviet border during the Cold War.
And then we were brought into a back room and had our first heavy-duty interrogation.
And what did we get to do, Jordan?What did we get to do?We got to talk about it.That's because Hacked is a tech show about cybersecurity, internet grifters, people using tech to do weird, unexpected stuff.Sometimes we focus on one big story.
Sometimes we talk about a bunch of little stories.
Find Hacked wherever you get your shows.That's Hacked, a show about all the weird stuff people do
Everyone loves an underdog story.I cannot believe this exists.
All right, guys.Dog coin is going crazy.I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift.I just hope it's not Dogecoin.
It is.Doggy coin or idiot coin.Doge.
Dogecoin.YouTube's all I got left.He said it's going to take over the world.
Jack Sparrow's on a daily basis.
This is the Dogecoin thing.You show that it's all a big gambling game.
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a meme. A project that started out as a joke has since become a path to generational wealth.Part of what people love about Doge is it makes investing fun.People feel good when they buy Dogecoin.
Shiba Inu is a Japanese hunting breed.I really want to get a Shiba Inu.My dream dog is a Shiba Inu.
Dogecoin is my sort of favorite cryptocurrency because it has dogs.
Ordinary people have been cut out of investing, told they should park their money in 401ks and let Wall Street handle all of it.Doge and the community it created were about taking your finances into your own hands and having fun doing it.
The point is that Dogecoin was invented as a joke, as essentially to make fun of cryptocurrency. I think there's like an argument, like fate loves irony.
To the moon.By 2021, Doge had created countless millionaires.Who bought a cryptocurrency, intended to be a meme, and became a millionaire in the process.
Sitting in this bed, in this studio apartment, and I just became a millionaire.Right now.
Doge Whales were being interviewed by the New York Times.Elon Musk was accepting it at the Tesla store.
My question is, what is Dogecoin?Well, it's a future currency.It's an unstoppable financial vehicle that's going to take over the world.And then... I get that, but what is it, man?
I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money.
Oh, so it's a hustle.It all came crashing down. Doge started out back in 2010 as a simple internet meme based on a Japanese Shiba Inu named Kabosu.
You may not know this pup's name, but you've most likely seen her face.
But this little Doge had big dreams.Dreams beyond mere internet meme things.An Adobe software engineer named Jackson Palmer wanted to make a joke crypto.
One day I sat down at home with beer and I just bought dogecoin.com, that's a bit funny, and I lapped the doge face onto a coin and just put it live.
With a message to contact him if anyone wanted to make the crypto a reality.Enter Billy Marcus, who worked at IBM and had conveniently just finished developing Bell's Coin, a tribute crypto for Animal Crossing.
Billy tweaked Litecoin's code, making everything dog-themed.
My co-founder, who's based up in Portland, had messaged me and said, I found that you can change the Litecoin source code and you can change the font to Comic Sans.I'm like, ooh, okay.
And Dogecoin, as we know it, was bored.It was a joke to them.
We thought it would maybe last like three days and then people, you know, with most memes, like they'd lose interest.
They had no idea the monster they had unleashed.After Doge went live on December 6th, 2013, the price rose over 300%.
Josh Moland built a tip bot for Dogecoin on Reddit, and then it just kind of absolutely took off.
Very quickly, Dogecoin assembled a cult following on Reddit.
We didn't create the Facebook page, the subreddit.All we created was Dogecoin.com.
Despite countless Doge haters, I cannot believe this exists.People found community in the project.They had never been in a crypto community like this before.
You don't see this kind of organization versus the other altcoins.Dogecoin has infiltrated social media.
Dogecoin was ridiculously cheap.It was the people's crypto.
Everyone, please stop with the Doge meme.I'm sick of it.It's over.I've seen a million of them.I'm done.The fact that people find it funny and relatively worthless has actually caused more people to use it.
They cared more about the community and hilarity than getting rich.But then they got hacked. Christmas 2013, a dark day for the Doge community.21 million Dogecoins were stolen from two Web3 wallets, DogeWallet and Instadoge.
At the time, that was about $12,000.Today, the stolen funds would be worth almost $3.5 million.
But there's real money involved.There was a heist.This alternative to Bitcoin has been stolen.There's just a lot of foolish investing going on.
And with so many Grinches spreading Doge FUD, it really couldn't afford bad press.
I mean, Stewart, this is a cryptocurrency that was started as a dope.
The little doggie was doomed.Just an empty stocking next to his Christmas tree.Until... someone leaped in to save Dogemas.Ben Doenberg, one of the founders of the Doge subreddit, started the Save Dogemas campaign.
Employing the Doge community to donate to people who lost their funds in the hack.The campaign raised over $2,000 in just two days. Dogemiss and its community was saved.And that's when things started to get really crazy for Doge.
With faith in the community restored, Doge holders proceeded to take the crypto community and the larger world by storm.Are digital currencies for real and will they last?
In January of 2014, just a month after the hack that almost brought Doge to its knees, the community raised $300,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics.
The next month, they started Doge for Kids, an organization to fund service dogs for autistic and blind kids.In March, they raised $55,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Weiss in a Doge-branded car called Moonrock.
The Doge community was sending money to Kenya for clean wells.They were sponsoring Indian athletes.They were even donating socks to people experiencing homelessness.I mean, holy shi- Stunned more than Cardano its entire life.Nah, I'm just kidding.
The Dogecoin foundation was established.And this is when Doge became known as the people's currency.
I do not want to get into any legal... I understand.
Listen, I don't... This was also right around the time when Doge did a 10x.The community was feeling extra generous.The doggie coin was cheap and fun.
The idea is to spontaneously party on the streets.
And this was the moment Dogeland left the internet and went IRL.
Well... They organized meetups.The community descended on train stations and other public spaces for Doge takeovers.
Is it even legal to have a party in the airport?How did you guys get in there?
I think when you're that weird, there aren't even any rules.They even put a Doge head over the Wall Street Bull, chanting, Up with the Dog!Down with the Bull! Throughout this time, a certain name began to emerge amidst the community.
Green was a doge whale, an active redditor, who donated money to doge fundraisers and even hosted parties. People began to see Green as a bit of a Doge hero.What was odd was no one had ever met Green in person.
But who cares, as long as they keep buying the champagne, right?And the reasons for celebration continued.Green jumped in, promising to lead Doge to true currency status by creating their own payment platform called Moolah.
It was going to be like the Doge version of PayPal. He even had dreams of creating a Doge ATM.The community jumped at the chance to be initial investors in such a groundbreaking endeavor.
Green raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and hired a team of people from the Doge community.Doge poured into the new platform.It seemed like it was only up for Doge.
Palmer and Marcus began to get suspicious, so they invited Green to Skype with them and a representative from the Doge Foundation. Green agreed.
The other thing which I'm feeling much better about now that I can actually see you and see you have a face.I understand you want to keep your address private.
Is there any way you can show us like an ID with the... At that point you are crossing lines and it falls into the realms of harassment then.You cannot legally ask that of a business representative unless you're a member of a regulatory body.
As I told Jackson before... And almost immediately revealed himself to be a combative, narcissistic... I understand.
And the exact opposite of what the Doge community stood for.Green refused to provide evidence of a security audit and threatened to sue the foundation for even offering to pay for such a thing.
You are now falling into the realm of harassing a company and its officers.Do you understand the legal ramifications of that?
From my perspective, if Jackson doesn't get access to some sort of proof that there was a security audit previous to now, then I'm going to resign in protest and I will, you know, take whatever steps I think is necessary to protect the community.
The fact we have a registered office service in the UK means that my identity has been proven as the director of the company.
I've seen the filing.I don't think you're Alex Green.
Okay, so we're now being accused by your foundation that I'm not a real person.That has now crossed into dangerous territory.And at this point, Ben, if you publicly say that, I will drag your asking report for defamation and you'll be f—ed.
That is your choice.I'll be honest, you'll run out of money long before I do.
But the founders, they weren't idiots.They recorded the Skype, and they released it to the public. The Daily Dot ran a story saying Moolah had doged by the caller, and the community began to turn against Green.
But that wasn't the end of the Green drama.After the video went viral, Palmer gets a call from Green's ex-girlfriend.She informs Palmer that Alex Green is a serial scammer.
He was involved in Magic the Gathering scams, fake website hosting deals, and his name wasn't even Alex Green.It was Ryan Kennedy.Not to mention, he was an accused peeping Tom and an S.O.
With everything coming out about Alex Green, or is it Ryan Kennedy, Moolah went bankrupt in October 2014, and Ryan Kennedy pieced out with the community funds. Kendi was later arrested in the UK for grapes and take out the G and got 11 years.
He was never convicted for fraud and he got released in 2021.So we'll see if we ever hear about the scammer again.Unfortunately, the Doge community was never the same after that.
They became suspicious of each other, less generous to donate to fundraisers or tip each other.Despite Doge actually surpassing Bitcoin in trading volume in January of 2021, the founders stepped away.
Billy Marcus actually sold his Doge for a used Honda.When the crypto winter of 2017 began to take hold, no one cared about magic internet money anymore, especially not some doggy coin.
That isn't until... Let's all get rich.Dogecoin is practically worthless.There are 800 million TikTok users.Invest just $25.Once the stock hits $1, you'll have $10,000.He says, tell everyone you know.
After that TikTok video, Doge doubled in seven days.
But Elon Musk had... What are cryptocurrencies?They're a type of digital money, but instead of being controlled by a central government, they're decentralized using blockchain technology.
And set his sights on Doge over a year before. In April 2019, the DogecoinX account ran a poll asking who their new CEO should be.Elon Musk won by a landslide.
All of it was for an April Fool's joke, but Musk accepted the nomination before immediately resigning and changing his profile to former CEO of Dogecoin.What is Dogecoin? Well, it actually started as a joke.
Doge's price leapt over 30% off this exchange.
Elon Musk literally tweeted one word, Doge.And the price of Dogecoin took off to the moon.
That was the point when traders started using Musk's tweets as a Doge indicator.
Doge, like Doge magazine, like Vogue.That caused the price to spike.Tweeting a picture of a rocket to the moon with one word.
Well, it was created in 2013.He was also in the midst of a very public legal battle with the SEC over alleged Tesla market manipulation.So what is Dogecoin?
Look at this.Elon Musk says SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the moon.Every time he posted about Doge, people were... What is Dogecoin?
People were making money. The GME short squeeze reached a fervor in the beginning of 2021.And Elon Musk was one of the few CEOs to side with retail.Elon's a genius.He tweeted several times.Elon posted GameStop.Sending the GME to the moon.
It was just skyrocketing.I'll do a hundred grand. But when Robinhood and other brokers shut down GameStop trading and the stock tanked, a lot of GME retail realized the stock market is ripped.
Well, you can say the same thing about the stock market and GameStop.
It wasn't long before they moved into crypto, led by Elon Musk, who was posting about Doge every few days.Other celebrities jumped on the Doge train.
Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons were tweeting about it, and Mark Cuban even announced that Dallas Mavericks would accept Dogecoin for tickets and products.Robinhood even experienced an outage due to the high demand for Dogecoin.
In mid-April, Doge forexed in three days, almost hitting $70 billion in trading volume over a 24-hour period.Influencers were getting Doge tattoos.
This was peak Doge in Elon Musk mania, and the community began preparing for Musk to appear on SNL, where they knew he would pump their bags to the long-awaited dollar mark.
There were rumblings that this historic rally was about to take a tumble. Okay, Dogecoin right now at six to four, so we'll be tracking this throughout the night.But everyone's trying to pump it to about a dollar.
At the beginning of the year, if you just put $1,000 into Dogecoin, and it's not even at a dollar yet, but today it would be worth, guess how much?Add 1.0 on there.It would be worth $100,000.
Hell no.We could hit $1 tonight.We could hit $1.50.A lot of people said it was going to drop big before the show started.Graham Stephan, But then the Doge messaging took a turn for the worst.
To explain cryptocurrency is weekend update financial expert Lloyd.Oh, you must do it to explain cryptocurrency.Here we go.Here we go.Here we go This is big, this is this is huge Thank you, Michael.
Well, I hate the Doge father.
And lately, prices have been soaring for cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and especially Dogecoin.And especially Dogecoin.
Oh yeah.What is Dogecoin?
Well, it actually started as a joke based on an internet meme.My question is, what is Dogecoin? Well, it's the future of currency.It's an unstoppable vehicle that's going to take over the world.
He said it's going to take over the world!Is it, man?
He's right, he's right.I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money.He said, he just said it's going to take over the world.Yeah, that's awesome.
Why didn't you say that, man?
Investors interpreted Hustle as a scam and ejected the Doge plane as quickly as they boarded.The price tumbled.
Okay, 5-4 now, so we're down a little bit more.Okay, down a little bit more to five.I'll be right back.
And if things weren't bad enough, Musk engaged with Crypto Whale on Twitter, who was a known scammer within the crypto community.Off of that one word, indeed, the entire market crashed. Billions of dollars were wiped out.
Some people lost their entire bags.Tons of retail investors left crypto forever.Musk's tweets implied Tesla had sold its Bitcoin.And Musk's public disclosures of Tesla's Bitcoin purchases had been a catalyst for Bullrun euphoria.
Despite clarifying Tesla hadn't sold any Bitcoin and attempting to revive the market with bullish tweets, Musk couldn't stop a falling knife. And the crypto community, especially Bitcoiners, had turned against him.
In the fall, Bitcoin briefly passed its all-time high, but Doge never reclaimed the $0.70 mark.And there was a new threat on the horizon.Shiba Inu was coming for Doge. Shiba Inu briefly flipped Doge's market cap in the fall of 2021.
It has been coming for Doge ever since.Doge has been forced to fight for its life.And as the market descended into a long, dark crypto winter, Doge lost the majority of its gains, reaching a 2022 low of around six cents.
And despite recovering with the rest of the market, the little doggie coin hasn't gotten anywhere near its previous price. Shib is still coming for him, almost flipping Doge's market cap again in March 2024.
But even if Shib or another meme coin overtakes Doge, Doge will still go down in history as the one who started it all.
One day I sat down at home with beer and I just bought dogecoin.com.That's a bit funny.
Doge led the way for an entirely new genre of crypto.Meme coins have given the best returns as bull run and offered non-traditional investors a fun entry into crypto. And whether you like them or not, Doge has undermined our entire financial system.
Like when you're that weird, there aren't even any rules.Meme coins make us ask questions about what gives an investment inherent value.So it's got value?
Yeah.Well, I mean, people are piling in.
Is value determined by some guy on CNBC in a suit boasting company earnings?Or do you, the people, decide what has value?Even if that value comes from an image that makes you laugh.
Welcome to the Financial Revolution, brought to you by Doge, a crypto based on a joke.
Sign in
