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This weekend, a news story broke that indicated that the Jamaican bobsleigh team qualified for the Winter Olympic games in Sochi, Russia — but there was a slight problem. There wasn’t enough money to pay for the trip to Russia.
Winston Wyatt, who pilots the sled, managed to put up some of his own money, but for the rest, he turned to PayPal to try an secure $40,000 to make the team’s dream a reality.
What they got was rather unexpected and unorthodox, to say the least.
The community behind the dogecoin cryptocurrency managed to come to the rescue, with the formation of a little group called Dogsled, with intentions to collect Dogecoin to convert into cash for the team.
“We started without a concrete plan in mind,” said Liam Butler, who runs the Dogecoin foundation. “I sent a few emails out… but that was the extent of it.”
In a matter of a few hours, a whopping 26 million dogecoins were collected. So many, in fact, that the dogecoin-to-bitcoin exchange rate climbed by 50 percent.
“Myself and Jackson Palmer (the creator of Dogecoin) were at a local pub trivia in Sydney when we noticed the value of Dogecoin had more than doubled since we’d last checked so we raced back to my house to ensure we could get the best price for the donations in a form the team could actually use,” said Butler. “As much as we have faith in Dogecoin to become the community currency of the internet, we still understand that the team need to buy their airfares in a fiat currency.”
Thus far, over $25,000-worth has been collected, and the good news? The donations keep coming in. (via The Guardian)
