Source: Steve Jurvetson - Flickr: Bezos’ Iconic Laugh
The internet almost broke today when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started following one of the Dogecoin Founder's (Billy Markus).
Jeff Bezos is only following 74 people in the world and now follows Billy's twitter account.
However, the plot thickens. Today, the founder of Litecoin added Dogecoin to his twitter profile. It's not widely known but in 2014, Charlie Lee actually saved Dogecoin.
Coincidently, Billy tweeted today that dogecoin wouldn’t exist without litecoin!
dogecoin wouldn’t exist without litecoin! - Billy Markus (Dogecoin founder)
How did he do this? Well he proposed something called merge mining. Merge mining allows the miners to earn block rewards for both Litecoin and Dogecoin while each of them share the same security. Back in 2014, Dogecoin had the minority of hashrate with Litecoin having the dominant scrypt hashrate. Being dominant in the hashrate is critical to prevent 51% attacks and ensure a strong network. Charlie proposed that Dogecoin update the software to allow for merge mining, and after some discussion and debate Dogecoin was merge mined and now shares the Scrypt dominance with Litecoin.
Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are dominant in their respective hash algorithm. Bitcoin uses SHA-256 hash algorithm and Litecoin uses scrypt hash algorithm. It is to be noted that Bitcoin miners can't mine scrypt hash algorithm, and Litecoin miners can't mine Bitcoin SHA-256 hash algorithm.
However, doge is a distance fork of Litecoin and also uses scrypt. Hence, doge was a perfect candidate to be merge mined with Litecoin.
In addition, dogecoin has a constant block rewards indefinitely that will help ensure miners continue to earn block rewards in addition to fees while mining both Litecoin and Dogecoin. Which will result in continued network security and longevity (possibly even longer than Bitcoin). This was a key strategic move by Charlie Lee, some even say Charlie Lee could be Satoshi Nakamoto with such a forward-thinking move.
This infographic below does a great job and comparing the different features of all three. As you can see Litecoin is a perfect complement to both Bitcoin and Dogecoin and is perfectly positioned.
Litecoin is also adding the largest upgrade in it's history, and will do so on May 19th with its Litecoin MWEB upgrade. This upgrade will make Litecoin fungible, this is the last missing good property of money. Eventually, this technology could be added to Bitcoin and Dogecoin in the future. This is why litecoin continues to be the best engineered money for the people by the people in the world.
The next question is when will Jeff Bezos start following Charlie Lee the founder of Litecoin? When will you?
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