Wow, much bubble: A joke cryptocurrency's market cap just shot past $2bn

The market cap of a joke cryptocurrency has doubled in less than a week, shooting past the $2bn mark in the latest sign of the craziness of the crypto world.

Dogecoin, based on a Shiba Inus dog internet meme which first emerged in 2013, had already hit the headlines last week when it passed the $1bn mark.

The value of Dogecoin has increased more than 6,000 per cent in the past year.

The rise and rise of bitcoin over the past year has spread to other cryptocurrencies - joke or not - with Ripple also starting the year on a high as it overtook ethereum as the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap.

The creator of Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, has not cashed in like other early adopters. He told the podcast Coloring Crypto on Sunday that he did not invest in any until 2017.

Based on estimated holdings, the anonymous creator of bitcoin became a billionaire on paper on the back of the boom.

Palmer said that cryptocurrencies are more like stocks than currency, a trend that is likely to continue.

"I think 2018 will be a year that cryptocurrency in its current form at least is finally written off as a currency, or a means of exchange. I think It's going to be cemented as akin to stocks, or digital stocks in technology," he said.

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