Dogecoin vs. Bitcoin: A Detailed Overview

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin always dominates the conversation, and rightly so, since BTC is the first cryptocurrency that launched the whole industry. Recently, Dogecoin emerged in the spotlight as another contender and has been the subject of many conversations. Both cryptocurrencies have their fans and detractors, but which one is actually the better investment? Let’s see the results of comparing Bitcoin vs. Dogecoin.

Dogecoin and Bitcoin: A Brief History

It all started with Bitcoin. The first-ever cryptocurrency was created in 2009 by an anonymous person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s idea was to design a peer-to-peer electronic cash system – a way to send and receive money without going through banks or other financial institutions.

Dogecoin, on the other hand, was created in 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. It was initially imagined as a parody response to the Bitcoin craze. The name and logo of the cryptocurrency are both based on the famous “Doge” meme, featuring a Shiba Inu dog. Contrary to Jackson’s expectations, it caught on as a legitimate currency and became one of the most widely-used altcoins around.

Bitcoin vs. Dogecoin – Differences

Now that we are aware of the origins of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, let’s see how they performed in the market.

Total Supply

The most significant difference between these two cryptocurrencies is that Bitcoin, unlike Dogecoin, has a limited supply. There can only ever be 21 million BTC in circulation. This number is further reduced by the bitcoins their owners can’t access because they, for various reasons, lost access to their Bitcoin wallets.

The limited supply of Bitcoin was Satoshi’s idea of creating a currency that would not be as inflationary as other major fiat currencies are currently. Dogecoin doesn’t have a supply limit, meaning it will be subject to inflation as the circulating supply grows.

Price

When you compare Dogecoin’s price vs. Bitcoin’s, it becomes clear which cryptocurrency pushed the market and whose value has appreciated more. At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin has experienced a drop, settling at about $23,000. A few months ago, the crypto market experienced a bull run which brought BTC to its all-time high of around $68,700.

Dogecoin had an all-time high in August 2021, reaching approximately $0.73. The meme-coin’s volatile price was also highly influenced by Elon Musk’s tweets but still hasn’t experienced a significant recovery in 2022. The current price is just under $0.083.

Market Cap

The main difference between Bitcoin and Dogecoin is their market capitalization. Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency with the highest market cap at $557 billion, meaning that 45% of the cryptocurrency market’s value belongs to Bitcoin.

On the other hand, while Dogecoin is among the top cryptocurrencies according to market cap: It’s in tenth place, in front of Polkadot and behind Solana. The total value of all Dogecoins in distribution is about $10.9 billion, which amounts to 0.88% of the crypto market cap.

Circulating Supply

When comparing DOGE’s vs. BTC’s circulating supplies, we need to point out three values. These are the number of coins in circulation, their 24-hour volume expressed in fiat currency, and the relation of the volume to the market cap.

Currently, there are more than 19.05 million BTC in circulation, while DOGE has more than 132.6 billion coins mined so far.

With a dominating presence in the market, it’s not surprising to see that, on a 24-hour basis, around $10.1 billion of BTC gets traded (almost DOGE’s entire market cap). In comparison, $260.5 million in DOGE is traded daily.

We can see that 2.38% of Dogecoin vs. Bitcoin’s 1.8% total supply is circulating daily. This reflects that BTC is more used as a store of value than DOGE, although the latter has seen an increasing acceptance as a payment method in the last few years.

Processing Transactions and Block Size

The time it takes for a cryptocurrency transaction to be processed depends on its code. Bitcoin is programmed so that new blocks with transaction information are added to the blockchain approximately in ten-minute intervals.

Dogecoin needs a minute on average to add new data to the blockchain. This means that transactions take less time to be authorized and are processed faster. Does this mean that in Dogecoin vs. Bitcoin duel, the meme coin is better for transactions than BTC?

On the surface, it may seem so, since 33 transactions per second can be processed with DOGE, while BTC is stuck at seven. Still, Bitcoin’s developer community constantly works on improving the digital currency to scale up and be used by more users. One such upgrade to the project is the Lightning Network.

Dogecoin has lower transaction fees than Bitcoin, too. To send DOGE, you’ll need less than one cent to make a transaction, while sending BTC requires around $2. These fees had experienced significant peaks when the market was in a bull run, and on April 2021, they peaked for Bitcoin at $60, while DOGE’s all-time high transaction fee was in March 2022 at $8.25.

Mining

Comparing Bitcoin vs. Dogecoin mining operations illustrates how dominant the cryptocurrencies are in the market. The Bitcoin network spends about 120 TWh annually, almost as much as Norway. Although some of this energy comes from renewable sources, Bitcoin mining undoubtedly spends a concerning amount of money and resources.

According to CoinShare’s 2019 research, almost 74% of BTC miners used renewables, but the situation changed significantly with the Chinese government imposing a ban on crypto mining operations. Now it’s hard to speculate how the situation has changed, but some estimates have BTC currently running approximately 55% on renewable energy.

Looking at Dogecoin’s energy consumption vs. Bitcoin’s, we can see that it’s significantly lower. At the beginning of 2022, Dogecoin’s annual power consumption was 6 TWh. While this is only around 5% of the power Bitcoin miners are using, it’s worth mentioning that DOGE has seen a rise in popularity among miners. This is due to its increase in popularity in 2021, as power consumption rose 75 times from 0.08 TWh, closely following the price increase from December 2020.

Bitcoin vs. Dogecoin Project Development

Bitcoin has had an impressive development roadmap so far. Some noteworthy changes to its network were the implementation of SegWit and the Lightning Network. SegWit (an abbreviation for segregated witness) update even managed to split a small portion of the Bitcoin community.

SegWit and Bitcoin Cash

Since Bitcoin is a community-based project, most of its miners and developers were proponents of improving the amount of data added to the block by using the SegWit update without changing the original block size from 1 MB. Worried about the future of Bitcoin, a portion of developers and miners decided to create their own version of BTC called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It was created as a fork of the original Bitcoin code, similar to how Dogecoin was based on Litecoin, also a fork of Bitcoin.

Lightning Network

Which is faster, Bitcoin or Dogecoin? The Lightning Network makes this question difficult to answer.

Lightning Network is a solution that runs parallel with the Bitcoin blockchain and uses smart contracts (independent programs running on the blockchain) to allow for instant payment processing as you would expect from Mastercard or Visa. The technology allows for millions of transactions per second, but the only limit is that you and the receiving party need to use Lightning to benefit from it.

Dogecoin Updates

You can use Bitcoin or Dogecoin to send tips to other users on Twitter. Dogecoin developers have also made steps towards making transaction fees more affordable. The Dogecoin Core 1.14.5 update changed the minimum transaction fee to 0.01 DOGE per kb, besides implementing other core improvements.

Currently, the most significant change in how DOGE works is changing how transactions are verified. Both Dogecoin and Bitcoin are using the proof-of-work method to ensure the security of the network and processing transactions. Dogecoin Foundation is closely collaborating with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, on moving the digital currency to a proof-of-stake model. This future update aims to enable everyone to contribute to the Dogecoin network and earn rewards from staking their funds.

With this, Dogecoin vs. Bitcoin energy consumption debate will clearly end with DOGE winning when it shifts to a more environmentally friendly proof of stake. Such methods are more efficient and decentralized, which is a good direction for project development.

Use Cases

Bitcoin can be used for various purposes, ranging from purchasing goods and services to simply speculating on the price. On the other hand, the Dogecoin community primarily used DOGE to tip on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Nowadays, both cryptocurrencies are popular payment methods, though Bitcoin is more widely accepted than DOGE.

Banking Option for Casinos

Dogecoin and Bitcoin are commonly used as casino banking options. BTC is unsurprisingly a more available option, but DOGE is getting accepted at an increasing number of online establishments. This isn’t surprising as both decentralized digital currencies offer relatively low-cost transactions. This makes them a popular banking option for gambling enthusiasts.

Both currencies are global and can be used by players from any country. Players can deposit and withdraw funds without having to worry about exchange rates or bank fees. In addition, player anonymity is preserved since there is no need to provide personal information when using these currencies.

Gambling with Bitcoin

The difference between Dogecoin and Bitcoin in the online casino industry is that BTC paved the way for other cryptocurrencies and showed the technology can be used to make gambling more accessible. Dogecoin entered the already established industry where BTC gambling was the standard and is still a more prevalent option among online casinos. Still, with fast and affordable transactions and the rising popularity of Dogecoin, it’s easy to understand why it found its place as a commonly used cryptocurrency in online casinos.

Which One Is Better?

So, is Dogecoin better than Bitcoin? It’s not fruitful to make uncompromising statements on which crypto coin is better. The best you can do is observe how these two cryptocurrencies have performed over the years and take it into account if you want to invest.

Bitcoin hasn’t always been a profitable or stable choice for cryptocurrency investments, but its price hikes are undeniably attractive even when you consider BTC’s yearly low prices. In the table below, you can see how the price has changed since 2012.

If your question is “How is Dogecoin different from Bitcoin for investors?” The answer is that it hasn’t reached BTC’s prices even closely, but that it’s also probably much less volatile. There’s potentially a bright future for DOGE fans, as announced updates and implementations promise to expand the number of people using the cryptocurrency and increase its value.