Billy Marcus

Billy Marcus is a software engineer and co-founder of Dogecoin.

Billy Marcus is a man who does not reveal many details about himself. He was born in Portland, Oregon. Marcus’s actual date of birth is unknown, but according to a Google search, his year of birth is 1983.

The Dogecoin co-founder also does not disclose details about his family. Who Billy Marcus’s parents are, as well as whether he has any brothers or sisters, is still a mystery.

There is also no information about his education. But, given his success in his career, he could have specialized in computer science and earned a degree in software engineering.

On his LinkedIn account, Billy joked that he has a Good Boi degree from a puppy training school.

Career at Dogecoin

After completing his engineering degree, Marcus worked in many corporate sectors, including the multinational technology company International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). There, he held the position of software engineer before launching Dogecoin.

It is worth noting that Jackson Palmer was the first to develop the Dogecoin idea. Being engaged in digital marketing at the time, he once jokingly tweeted that he would invest in Dogecoin.

Palmer received a lot of positive feedback on this tweet, so he decided to buy the Dogecoin.com domain. Jackson Palmer also photoshopped the logo on the coin and posted it on his website. This is how the image of the coin with a dog and the name Dogecoin appeared in Comic Sans font. But there was no software that could make this image a real cryptocurrency.

That would be the end of Dogecoin’s story, but Billy Marcus, who was working as an IBM programmer at the time, came across the site. He had already tried to launch his own cryptocurrency, Bells, but no one was interested in it.

The idea of combining the meme and blockchain fascinated him. Marcus wrote a letter to Palmer with a proposal to write code for Dogecoin. And without waiting for a response, he did it. It took him three hours to create Dogecoin, which he spent mostly on the interface rather than writing algorithms.

Dogecoin is a clone of Luckycoin, a cryptocurrency based on Litecoin, which used the Bitcoin algorithm. And so, on December 8, 2013, less than two weeks after the joke tweet, Palmer and Marcus presented a working version of Dogecoin.

Marcus tried to mine bitcoin back in 2013, in his spare time from playing computer games. But then he discovered that it was a long, resource-intensive process. That’s why Billy made Dogecoin as simple as possible — it could be mined in one minute and exchanged with other users in a few clicks. The coin was also very cheap — within a hundredth of a cent. But there is no finite number of Dogecoin coins. While there cannot be more than 21 million bitcoins (which creates a built-in deficit), Dogecoin can be issued endlessly (but no more than 5.2 billion new coins annually).

The value of the new cryptocurrency increased by almost 300 percent within two weeks of its launch. In the first month, Dogecoin.com had about a million users, and Dogecoin’s capitalization amounted to $ 60 million. However, in December 2013, Dogecoin was hacked. Many people lost their valuable currency. That is why Marcus and Palmer launched the SaveDogemas initiative to collect donations to compensate for the losses. Within one month, almost all the losses were covered, and soon, dogecoin became one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies.

In 2015, Palmer and Marcus left Dogecoin. Billy also sold all of his assets (the funds he had at the time were only enough to buy a Honda Civic).

From the very beginning, Marcus and Palmer set themselves the task of distinguishing Dogecoin from the mass of other virtual currencies. One of the ways was charity. In January 2014, the partners announced a campaign to raise funds to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics. By the end of January, they managed to raise 27 million Dogecoins or $ 30,000.

Dogecoin has also been used to raise funds for digging wells in Kenya, for NASCAR driver Josh Wise’s performance in a race, training dogs to be companions for sick children, and more. Dogecoin has also sponsored the Premier League and SpaceX’s mission to the moon.

Career today

According to MoneyInc., the Dogecoin co-founder has returned to his engineering job at IBM. There, he is most likely engaged in the development of various programs and software.

It is worth noting that Billy is a collector of NFTs and has a large collection of unique Doge pixel avatars. They are available on OpenSea at a minimum price of $ 1259.71 (0.33 ETH). Marcus is also the creator of doodles that are available on Rarible.

The programmer is often active on Twitter, where he posts funny memes. They often feature dogs representing news from the cryptocurrency world. Marcus also occasionally expresses his personal opinions on some news about virtual assets. On LinkedIn, Billy describes himself as a freelance person who posts memes on Twitter.

Marcus did not say whether he would return to cryptocurrency in the near future. Despite the growth of Dogecoin’s market value, he seems to be satisfied with his current status.

Other information.

• Billy is known as Shibetoshi Nakamoto on Twitter and boasts 969.6 thousand followers;
• Marcus is convinced that Dogecoin should be more about joy and kindness.