The Jamaican bobsled team is going to the moon! Or, at least the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Fun-loving users of the Dogecoin virtual currency just helped make Winter Olympics history – by raising more than $30,000 worth of Dogecoin to help fund the Jamaican bobsled team’s trip to the Games in Sochi, Russia. The team – which doesn’t only exist in the movie Cool Runnings – said it needed as much as $80,000 to pay for the cost of travel, equipment, and other expenses, or they could not make it to this year’s Olympics.
More than 26.5 million Dogecoins worth around $33,000 have been donated by the community so far through the Dogecoin Foundation, a charitable organization centered around Dogecoin and co-founded by Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer. Due to Dogecoin’s potential for major fluctuations in its price (along with the fact that you can’t buy bobsled equipment with Dogecoin), 26 million in Dogecoin has already been converted to Bitcoin, which “will be passed on to the Jamaican bobsled team,” according to Liam Butler, who helps run the Dogecoin Foundation with Palmer and co-founder Billy Markus. Another 550,000 Dogecoins (about $750) have been donated since the first batch of money was converted to Bitcoin.
The Dogecoin community’s support of the Jamaican bobsled team kicked off this weekend, after the team launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for its Olympic trip. While the community appears genuinely interested in helping the Jamaican athletes, it also sees its giving as a way to more exposure for its beloved Dogecoin.
“Sponsoring the Jamaican bobsled team would be the biggest thing we’ve done so far, and it would be an awesome cause,” one of the first Dogecoin users to propose the idea on Reddit wrote. Another early proponent of the charity campaign added: “If we were to get behind this cause, we would generate a great deal of positive buzz. The return of a Jamaican Bobsled team alone will break headlines, but imagine if it was on the shoulders of Doge they got there!”
The $33,000 from Dogecoin donations comes in addition to the $5,550 raised through the team’s official Indiegogo campaign.
The Jamaican bobsled team has not yet responded to our request to comment on the Dogecoin community’s fundraising. We will update this space with any response we receive.
[Images via Imgur/Reddit]
