Dogecoin Pushes for the Stephen Colbert Bump

Stephen Colbert’s move to replace David Letterman on The Late Show has captured a lot of attention, and fans of crypto-currency Dogecoin are hoping they can capitalize on this to gain more publicity for their Bitcoin replacement.

The plan is to bombard Colbert’s Twitter account with tweets that will get the hashtag #Doge4Colbert trending on the social media site.

While the plan worked briefly, it was quickly crowded out by other trending stories on bigger news stories like the Heartbleed bug, the missing Malaysian Air flight, and Kathleen Sibelius’s resignation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Whether Dogecoin succeeds in getting the infamous “Colbert bump” or not, their co-ordinated effort to leverage social media to get attention reflects the ultimate need for crypto-currencies to embrace the mainstream.

Like any other form of money, Dogecoin is only as successful as it is accepted; currencies cannot remain limited to a small niche forever, which makes them antithetical to the reality of much of internet culture.

Despite its absurd internet meme legacy, Dogecoin has made a more aggressive effort at mainstream acceptance than any other alternative cryptocurrency, demonstrating its fans’ understanding of the need for currencies to be widely accepted and adopted to work.

It’s especially popular as a means for comment tipping. On the popular content sharing site, Reddit, users are often seen sending each other varying amounts of Dogecoin rewarding insightful, funny, and noteworthy comments.

This is not Dogecoin’s first attempt at a mainstream breakthrough. Earlier in 2014, Dogecoin donations to the Jamaican bobsled team exceeded $30,000, earning mentions in Bloomberg, the BBC, and NPR. More recently, the Doge4Nascar campaign raised over $50,000 in sponsorship for American car racer Josh Wise.