12 years have passed, and that Shiba Inu is still here.

On December 6, 2013, two programmers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, played a joke—they created a meme coin to mock the then-crazy crypto scene. The result? That joke now has a market cap of $22 billion, ranking ninth on CoinMarketCap.

The project's social media bio still has that line: "Elon Musk thinks we're pretty cool."

It really is cool. Over the years, Musk has constantly hyped it up; every time he tweets, Dogecoin price jumps up and down. The market feels like a roller coaster, and the community is always in celebration mode.

But if you think about it, this coin hasn't had any major technical breakthroughs, nor does it have a particularly rich set of use cases—so why has it survived until now?

The answer might lie in that silly, grinning Shiba Inu meme. It’s no longer just a meme coin; it’s become a part of crypto culture itself—a reminder to everyone that this market has never been just about the numbers. Emotion and consensus can hold up an entire world, too.

From joke to icon, Dogecoin has proved one thing over 12 years: sometimes, if you take things too seriously, you lose.