Dogecoin Is No Joke. Businesses Are Using the Memecoin to Sell Pizza, Wings, and Even Tesla Merch.

The token has become surprisingly popular among businesses looking to accept crypto for real-world purchases.

When Aaron McCann, co-founder of Williamsburg Pizza in the Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York, decided he wanted to start accepting cryptocurrency at his pizzeria, he quickly realized that none of the existing payment processors worked for his needs.

So he built his own.

McCann, a self-described crypto enthusiast, had been trying to figure out how to accept cryptocurrency at Williamsburg Pizza for six years. But the high transaction costs and slow speeds of Bitcoin and Ethereum made them impractical for everyday purchases like a slice of pizza.

“The transaction times are too slow and the fees are too high,” McCann told Bloomberg. “Dogecoin is the only proof-of-work cryptocurrency with transaction times fast enough and fees low enough to be practical for merchants like myself.”

McCann's solution was DogeExpress, a payment processor specifically for Dogecoin, the memecoin repped by a picture of a Shiba Inu dog. It's a surprising choice for a payment method, considering that Dogecoin was quite literally meant to be a joke when it was created in 2013.

But 11 years into its existence, a punchline is emerging that no one expected: Businesses looking to accept crypto for real-world purchases are finding Dogecoin to be surprisingly useful.

That's largely because payments on the memecoin's network are much faster and cost way less than many other cryptocurrencies. While transaction costs vary, the average fee is currently around 0.07 Dogecoin, or less than a penny, whereas using Bitcoin costs the equivalent of about 79 cents, according to BitInfoCharts.

“It’s a small, but growing part of our revenue,” McCann said of Dogecoin payments, which only make up about 1% of gross sales at Williamsburg Pizza.

McCann is now trying to expand what is still very much a niche use of the token, since use of all cryptocurrencies in payments remains somewhat rare. After rolling out DogeExpress at Williamsburg Pizza more than two months ago, he has since rolled it out at five retailers, with eleven others in the early stages of onboarding.

Another surprising use for Dogecoin is in remittances. Cash payments from relatives living abroad are traditionally sent through international banks or financial retail businesses, but those often include transaction fees as high as 7%. And Dogecoin transactions, even across borders, typically take only about one minute – much faster than the average Bitcoin transaction times, which can range from 10 minutes to an hour. The most popular exchanges used to send Dogecoin are Binance and Coinbase, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.com.

Of course, the tongue-in-cheek nature of Dogecoin that inspired countless memes adds to its appeal as well. Even if you're not a cryptocurrency enthusiast, you've probably heard about Dogecoin.

Its notable endorsers include celebrities like rappers Snoop Dogg and Lil Yachty, and even Mark Cuban, a billionaire on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Musk, his frequent sparring partner on X. The Dallas Mavericks basketball team started accepting Dogecoin as payment for merchandise and tickets in 2021, though usage so far has been modest: Cuban estimates that the Mavericks have accepted around 25,000 Dogecoin so far.

“It's an inexpensive way to become part of an incredibly vibrant online community,” Cuban told Bloomberg.

The virality of Dogecoin makes the cryptocurrency an effective marketing tool for businesses, according to McCann. That helps it stand out from comparable alternatives such as Litecoin that also allow for fast and cheap transactions.

Litecoin is the most-used cryptocurrency for transactions made using the payments app BitPay, accounting for a 38% share in August, according to the company's website. Dogecoin ranked fifth, ahead of larger tokens like XRP and USDC. Yet Litecoin's current market cap sits at less than $5 billion, compared with Dogecoin's $16 billion, which ranks it as the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Like digital assets such Bitcoin and Ethereum, Dogecoin is a peer-to-peer currency that uses blockchain technology to verify transactions. And like Bitcoin, it's a “proof of work” token, meaning so-called miners compete to solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to validate transactions and earn compensation paid in crypto.

For crypto diehards, there are some disadvantages to the memecoin compared with the original cryptocurrency. Dogecoin is considered to be less secure than Bitcoin. And unlike Bitcoin, which was designed to have a limited supply, there is no cap on the amount of Dogecoin in circulation, meaning the case for buying and holding it over the long term is weaker. Its value is also prone to wider swings, with a 260-day historical volatility that is almost twice that of Bitcoin's. It traded for about 6 cents a year ago, as high as 22 cents in March, and goes for about 11 cents today.

“Right-tailed”

Yet Dogecoin has a multiyear