Is 2026 the year of the DOGE?
- Jordan Jefferson Founder & CEO · DogeOS
DogeOS is the app layer for Dogecoin, built to give Doge users more to do than just hold DOGE or leave it sitting on exchanges. Stablecoins, DeFi, games, AI tools, consumer apps, all of that becomes important once Dogecoin has rails around it.
Transcript
Hodl Up: Bonjour, and welcome back to another episode of Hodl Up. Today we have Jordan Jefferson, the CEO of DogeOS, with us. Jordan, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jordan: Thanks for having me.
Hodl Up: Talk to us. I know it sounds cliche to ask about your origin story and how you got into crypto, but I'm really curious, because before the interview you said you've been in the space since 2011, and I don't know if we've ever met anyone earlier than that. So I'm really interested to hear about it.
Jordan: It's funny, I also can't really believe it. It doesn't feel like it's been that many years. A friend introduced me to Bitcoin in 2011, or it could even have been late 2010. He wanted to build a product for Bitcoin, and I happened to have built something very similar, which had nothing to do with crypto, before crypto existed. So he said, "Look, we could do the same thing, but for Bitcoin." It was basically a rewards platform where you could earn Bitcoin from doing surveys, cashback on online shopping and so on. I ended up building that in the very early days. It paid out, I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of bitcoin to people in the early days, but back then Bitcoin was under $10. So hopefully some of those people became millionaires from doing a five-minute survey or something like that. That would be pretty cool. That was my introduction, so it was very much Bitcoin first. Then Dogecoin came out a few years later, and to be honest, I didn't really get it. I was kind of a serious guy. I thought, look, Bitcoin does the job, what's this? It's a joke. It's funny, I get it. But I didn't really appreciate how powerful a joke could become, how it could become a cultural movement, and later, how Dogecoin is actually faster, cheaper and, I think most importantly, more fun. So that was my intro to crypto, and then I slowly started to appreciate Dogecoin, which basically led us here, and I guess that's what we're going to talk about.
Hodl Up: I'm really intrigued by your choice of Dogecoin. You said it's faster, cheaper and interesting. It's the internet currency, right? But why Dogecoin specifically? In my opinion, there must have been a moment where you said, "Let's build on Dogecoin, let's do what we've been doing until now." There are quite a lot of blockchains out there, so why Dogecoin?
Jordan: I have to credit one of my co-founders, Bill, with pushing us toward Dogecoin. This was about four years ago, when we first built MyDoge. I was actually building something on Ethereum at the time, so I wasn't really looking at Dogecoin as a place to build, and neither was most of the industry, because, okay, it's like Bitcoin, there are no smart contracts. Everyone was really excited about dApps and building on-chain that cycle. So we weren't really looking at Dogecoin. And Bill said to us, "Look, there are tens of millions of holders. There's this passionate community in the Dogecoin space. Why is nobody building for them? Wouldn't it be incredible to build a product where you already have millions of fans and users who want to use it and support you?" I thought about it and said, okay, that's a good thesis. There's a huge community here; maybe they want something. But we didn't know what they wanted. So we looked at the Dogecoin space and realized there wasn't a great mobile wallet or mobile app for Dogecoin. There had been one in the past, but it had been abandoned and wasn't being updated. Other crypto wallets support Dogecoin, but if you're new to crypto and you hear about Dogecoin, you've never heard of Trust Wallet. You don't know how wallets work. You go to the App Store, type in "Doge," and ask, "What do I download?" So we thought, let's build a really awesome, fun, unique Dogecoin-specific wallet, just for the Doge community, and see if they like it. My CTO, Alex, and I spent months building it, just the two of us. We launched it on the App Store with no marketing and no money raised. We just wanted to see if people wanted it. We launched the first version, and immediately everyone was super excited: "Oh, this is so awesome, people are building something just for Dogecoin, we want to support it." The community was super supportive. After launching the wallet and seeing the community's response, interacting with them, having them help test it and fix bugs, and asking, "Hey, can we do some graphics? Can we make you a logo?"... everyone just wanted to help. That's when I fell in love with Dogecoin. It was really that interaction with the community. And that's when we realized there was demand here. People do want more Doge products. We started with the wallet, and now here we are, building the foundation for a huge Dogecoin ecosystem.
Hodl Up: What was user behavior like back then? Were people interacting because their beloved cryptocurrency now had an application layer, or was behavior similar to other altcoins that had wallets and applications? If that makes sense.
Jordan: That's a good question. I think it was a little unique in the Doge world. One of the reasons Dogecoin took off was as a tipping currency. People just started tipping each other, really on Reddit in the early days. I credit the Dogecoin community on Reddit as one of the major factors behind Dogecoin's viral rise, and obviously the Doge meme itself was first posted on Reddit. Someone built a tip bot so you could tip people Doge for their posts. It was also fun because back in the day, a million Dogecoin wasn't worth much. I think that was part of the fun. People thought, "Wow, I definitely can't own a million Bitcoin, but I can own a million Doge, and I can even give it away because it's only a few cents." So it had this reputation as a tipping currency, and people just loved to spread it. When we launched the wallet, we had social features: you could find your friends, you had profiles, and you could tip people and send messages. We also launched a feature that let you tip on Twitter, before it was called X, which was definitely the most popular feature and still kind of is. We wanted to bring those Reddit tipping vibes back, and we brought them to X, where the whole crypto community now was, and people just kept tipping each other. I'd say that was the number one behavior: people giving away Doge to spread the fun and introduce new people to crypto. At the same time, Doge is money, and it's used for payments. The community wants to see it become the payment currency of the world: Earth, Moon, Mars and beyond. So people do use it to buy things where you can actually spend crypto. Let me give you one example that blew my mind. Maybe two or three months after launching the wallet, we started seeing posts on Twitter, and one I remember really well was a vendor at a night market in Indonesia using our wallet to buy and sell, with customers coming and paying in Dogecoin. We didn't do any marketing; it just happened organically. So we thought, wow, Doge is a payment currency, and people around the world are actually spending it. We made this wallet, and they thought, man, this is the best way to sell my t-shirts at the night market, or whatever they were doing. So I think it was that old-school crypto behavior, spreading it, sharing it, sending it to your friends, plus real-world commerce, which I think is the end goal of all this.
Hodl Up: You mentioned real-world commerce and Indonesia. I think good products find their fit in markets where there's a need for them. In my country, for example, I think crypto would be quite a good thing, not even Dogecoin, but even stablecoins for online payments. Since you mentioned Reddit and Twitter, now called X: what do you think about Elon Musk supporting Dogecoin? What was the narrative behind it? Was it random, where he just saw the Doge meme and said, "Okay, I like the coin," or did he have a whole plan? I've seen all the conspiracies.
Jordan: It's crazy. I definitely don't think there's any conspiracy around it, and I think it's basically what you said. If you follow Elon, which basically the whole world does at this point, it's very clear: he really just loves memes. He really does. I'm pretty sure he saw it and thought it was funny and awesome. The other story I've heard is that a lot of early Tesla, and maybe SpaceX, employees were jumping on the Doge train when it was going very viral, and I think he saw it as the people's currency, which is what we call it now. He saw that all his employees, all these hardworking people, really believed in it and supported it, and it was funny and fun, so he thought, okay, I'll support it too. That's my theory, but I'd bet everything that there's no conspiracy. Elon used to tweet about Dogecoin and the market would react just to his tweets, which isn't the case anymore, and I think that's healthy. People would say, "Oh, he's just tweeting this so he can trade and make a profit." And I'm like, guys, he's the richest man in the world. SpaceX is going to IPO at $1.5 trillion. Do you think he's really spending his time tweeting about Dogecoin to trade and make a few bucks? Again, I'd bet everything that's not true. That conspiracy is silly. But conspiracies can be fun. I think it adds to the lore of Dogecoin, so I don't mind it.
Hodl Up: I once saw one of the most accurate posts I've ever seen on X, looking at what makes a good memecoin. It listed all these technical aspects, like distribution, but the most important one was memeability.
Jordan: Yes.
Hodl Up: I don't want to reduce Dogecoin to just a memecoin, but you are the leaders of that domain. At the same time, you've given birth to millions of other memecoins, and I'm not entirely happy about that, because I've lost a lot of money on other memecoins. There's also the argument that the last cycle wasn't as good for altcoins because of memecoins, with platforms like Pump.fun onboarding people for quick gains and so on. Still, none of them can become Dogecoin, right? But do you think you've given birth to maybe an evil side of crypto?
Jordan: That's a really interesting question, and I definitely agree with you. The last cycle of Pump.fun and memecoin mania was probably net negative. So many people came into crypto, lost all their money and left, and bringing them back is going to be really tough. Why would you come back when you've just been scammed, or lost everything, whether it was a scam or just because you were gambling? You probably have a negative view of crypto now. So I do think that was bad. But can you blame the Dogecoin community or the Dogecoin creators? Not really, because Dogecoin was sort of accidental. No one knew you could make a memecoin, and they didn't even call it a memecoin back then, and have it go so big. And the creators themselves didn't get rich from creating Dogecoin. I think that's a big difference. I also like what you said about memeability being the most important thing. I have a big problem with the fact that we now call any token a memecoin, when most often there isn't even a meme behind it. Okay, sometimes it's a meme that isn't that funny, but often there's just no meme. You're just creating a token to make money and convince other people to buy it. That's not really the point. I think the meme itself is a big reason Dogecoin is so successful, because it's so universal. It's not political or offensive. It's really funny and really cute. The Doge meme is everywhere; everyone in the world recognizes it. Nobody sees a cute Doge shirt and doesn't want to wear it. Nobody walks down the street, sees a derpy Shiba Inu and doesn't think, "Oh, that dog is really cute." It's just so approachable, and I think that's why it's so successful. And it's very hard to replicate, because it's been growing for so long. Creating something new now and growing it for 15 years until the whole world recognizes it and falls in love with the image is really hard to replicate, especially since it happened organically and accidentally the first time. So I think it was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. I don't think any memecoin can ever really achieve or surpass that. It's kind of the Bitcoin of memes.
Hodl Up: When Dogecoin hit $73 billion or more at the 2021 peak, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was crazy, and I was 100% sure it was going to $1. You mentioned Pump.fun, and I'd like to touch on that too, because I think the place for a memecoin factory should have been Dogecoin. And with DogeOS, I think you can actually do that, because you're working toward making Dogecoin fully programmable. So what are you building right now?
Jordan: Great question. DogeOS is bringing the EVM to Doge: full programmability, turning Doge from just payment infrastructure into something that supports an entire ecosystem. It could support memecoins on Doge, and I agree: I think memecoins should be on the original meme chain. But what I'd really like to see is innovation that fixes the problems of the last cycle, the problems of Pump.fun. That's where I think Dogecoin can really show the world that there's a better way to do things, where people don't all get scammed and lose money. We do have a few teams in the ecosystem building platforms like that. There's one called Anoncoin, and one called Starbase. These teams are saying, look, people are always going to launch memecoins. You can't just say "don't do this" or make it impossible. People will launch tokens. It just doesn't always have to be a scam. I'm really excited about these devs, the ones I mentioned and others, who are innovating on ways where, yes, you can launch a memecoin, and yes, maybe you're doing it to make money, but with built-in mechanisms that make it inherently safer, where people can't lose all their money if they buy in, and where it's more community-focused. I think we really need to get back to PvE, not PvP. Dogecoin was PvE: it was us against the world, joining the movement, and it went so big. Now people buy a memecoin for 10 seconds and sell, and the person who bought after them loses money. It's all PvP. So I'm really excited about that.
But there's a lot more going on in DogeOS. Bringing an entire ecosystem to Dogecoin, or enabling the community to build all the pieces of one, touches everything. It touches on-chain agents and AI. It touches DeFi, which doesn't exist on Doge yet, and which I think is hugely important for bringing financial infrastructure on-chain, letting it be controlled by the people and decentralized. It touches gaming. I think crypto gaming has gotten this reputation of "it doesn't work, it's so dumb," but I totally disagree. The way people built certain games, where it's all about the money, maybe isn't sustainable, but that doesn't mean you can't build awesome games using crypto, or decentralized games. And because Doge is inherently fun, let's build an ecosystem of fun, cute Doge games. You don't have to play a game to get rich, but what if you earned a little while having fun? I think that's sustainable. So I'm excited to see what everyone builds. We know maybe a hundred teams building right now, but when we open the floodgates, anyone can build anything. I don't want to ramble too long, but one more example: we have a ton of teams working on AI or vibe-coding platforms that will help you build cool stuff on Dogecoin. To me that's the most exciting part, because the community is so hungry to participate. People want to do things and build, the same way people wanted to help when we launched our wallet, even though they weren't developers or designers. If we put these tools in the hands of the community and let them create games, apps or DeFi, I think we'll see that the Dogecoin community has millions of people who want to do more and be part of the movement. And I'm sure there will be some absolute gems that someone vibe-codes or creates that none of us have thought of.
Hodl Up: I fully agree with all the points you just made. First, on PvE versus PvP: it got to a point where I was excited about a 10% profit on a memecoin with a $300,000 market cap. It wasn't like that in the past. And on gaming, I think one reason the Web3 gaming sector regressed is that people were making and playing games purely to make money, instead of making money being a byproduct of having fun. But what we've seen in the last 18 months is crypto becoming a lot more institutionalized. Maybe even the ethos of crypto is being challenged in some ways, but it seems inevitable, and companies have to adapt. With Dogecoin being the ultimate retail success, how do you navigate this institutionalization phase as an ecosystem? What are you doing about it? I don't just mean whether there will be Dogecoin ETFs; I want your take.
Jordan: Good question. I agree we're in an institutional cycle right now, and you feel it at the conferences too. It's much more institutional than a few years ago. I even gave a talk here yesterday about stablecoins. I think it's probably just the natural ebb and flow. I hope another big retail cycle comes after this, and again, that's what we're trying to do with Dogecoin: it is the retail crypto. But I do think it's a good thing. Part of the challenge in building this ecosystem is going out to builders across crypto and convincing them to come build on Dogecoin, or going to a major cross-chain protocol that has only integrated the big chains and saying, "Guys, you need to integrate Dogecoin now. We're making it possible, and this is really big." The fact that institutions are also starting to look at and invest in Dogecoin, with ETFs and so on, as you said, has helped a lot. It made our job easier, because the whole industry and the world are more accepting that Dogecoin is actually one of the big players. By market cap it has been forever, but in public opinion, a lot of people still didn't really take it seriously. So I'm happy about that bit of institutional adoption. But look, my passion is certainly not institutions buying Dogecoin. That's not really the idea. The idea is a fully decentralized future, with the people's currency in the hands of the people. So I view it as a stepping stone. I do think it's helpful, but Dogecoin is for everyone, and everyone means institutions and random people on the street alike. I think that's cool. It's also important to point out that it's kind of hilarious. It's really funny for a serious institution to now be buying Dogecoin or building an exchange-traded product for it, because even five years ago that was almost unimaginable. Five years ago, no institution wanted to touch Dogecoin. Absolutely none. In the last year or two there's been a total shift. So I think it's kind of cool, fun and remarkable. And if Dogecoin is going to be the currency of the world, of course it's going to be everywhere, from TradFi to crypto.
Hodl Up: I think Elon Musk actually predicted this, it taking over the financial system. Since you mentioned your talk about stablecoins yesterday, I really want to touch on stablecoins on Dogecoin. You want to keep Dogecoin fun, but I think crypto is for literally everyone, as you just said, not just Dogecoin. Dren said crypto is becoming institutionalized, but I just figured out during our talk that crypto is big. There's space for institutions, for normal people, for retail, and for people who are just here for the vibes. So talk to us about stablecoins on Dogecoin. I think you're actually working on something like that.
Jordan: Definitely. First of all, it's very important for a couple of reasons I'll explain, and I also think it's really cool. We love Dogecoin because it's one of the most decentralized blockchains in the world. It's the second-biggest proof-of-work network. That's the reason we want to build an ecosystem around it. Dogecoin can be used for more than just transacting Dogecoin. Why can't we have other assets on Dogecoin? Why can't we transact our stablecoins on Dogecoin? Because we love Dogecoin and believe in its security, and because it's so decentralized, it might actually be a better place for stablecoins to live and transact. It's also exciting and important because a lot of the Doge community isn't multi-chain. They don't use other blockchains, so maybe they haven't touched a stablecoin yet. There's no DeFi on Doge. These are huge opportunities to bring the benefits of Web3 that we've used and experienced to a community that hasn't experienced them yet. Let me explain where I'm most excited. One is simply DeFi on Doge. What does that mean? The absolute basics, a decentralized exchange with a DOGE/USD pair on-chain, would be a game changer for Dogecoin. For us, that's how most blockchains have worked for a long time. Look at Ethereum or Solana: let's say roughly half the volume of SOL or ETH trades on-chain and the other half on centralized exchanges. With Dogecoin, it's basically 100% on centralized exchanges and 0% on-chain. That means exchanges capture all the value. Users can't LP their Doge and capture any of the trading value. Our goal is to bring value to the people: to builders who can build these DeFi products, and to users holding Dogecoin, who can't really earn any interest on it right now but could if we had decentralized trading. I think that's really simple, and obviously you need a stablecoin to make that pair. But I also think about simply holding stablecoins in your wallet. Right now MyDoge is just a Dogecoin wallet. Soon it will support all cryptocurrencies, but more importantly, it will support assets on Doge. So instead of your dollars sitting in your bank account earning nothing and your Dogecoin sitting in your Dogecoin wallet, your dollars could be a stablecoin on Doge earning you 5% interest. I think that's pretty exciting, and it's just the beginning.
Hodl Up: In one of our previous episodes we talked about Bitcoin, and when all these Bitcoin application layers were introduced, a lot of Bitcoin maxis were against it, because Bitcoin should be held, not used. To me, Dogecoin is the Bitcoin of memecoins in a way. Have you seen feedback from the community saying Dogecoin shouldn't have all these use cases, or a stablecoin, because fewer people will hold it, or people will trade it more often, which might not be good for the community? I'm not sure what the holder distribution looks like for Dogecoin right now, but I want your take.
Jordan: Good question. I think it's very different from Bitcoin, because the community has always encouraged using and spending Dogecoin. It's never been about holding. Maybe there was a time, when everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and the price was pumping, sure, but long term the message has always been: use it, spend it. That's why people tip it to others, and why people actually try to buy their coffee with it. That culture makes what we're doing make a lot more sense. On Bitcoin, I totally agree. I have friends who built Bitcoin layer 2s, and in the end they really struggled to find demand, because everyone says, "Never move your Bitcoin. Everyone hold, and we'll all get rich." In Dogecoin it's more like: if we make money from having this currency, awesome, but that's maybe a byproduct. What we're really trying to do is use it and take over the world that way. And guess what? If everyone is using and spending it, I'm sure the price will go up in the long term. So I think culturally it helps. The Dogecoin Foundation has been pushing this message for a long time: you should spend it. When the Doge community on Twitter sees someone post a clip of buying something with Dogecoin, they say, "This is how it should be done. Get out there and spend your Doge." Even the properties of Doge itself: Bitcoin has a limited supply, 21 million, and there will never be any more, so the whole narrative is "collect them." Dogecoin has a small inflation; the supply increases forever. It's naturally designed as a good form of money, with less inflation than fiat but still a little, so at a fundamental level you're technically encouraged to spend it. I think that's good, and what we've seen so far is that people are excited about the opportunity to use it and spend it, and maybe to earn more, which is also exciting: by spending, transacting and building this economy, we can all actually earn more Dogecoin.
Hodl Up: Before this, you mentioned that tokens are coming soon to MyDoge. We need the alpha right now. We need to be the first ones to buy.
Jordan: I'll get in trouble if I give any dates. But I'll be honest: the community has been patient for a long time, because we've been hyping them up about a number of things we've been building, and I really appreciate their patience. Sometimes you see comments on X like, "Enough talk about 'soon,' just launch something already." Don't get me wrong, we've launched many things over the last two years, but the big stuff we've been working on, the new version of MyDoge, the DogeOS mainnet launch and a bunch of other products our team has been building, is all launching this year. It's all coming this year. I can't give a date; I don't want to disappoint anyone. But I can promise it's going to be worth the wait. There will be opportunities for builders, for traders and for the community. I can say we've just rolled out the beginning of a fun campaign. I don't know if you want to ask me about it, or I should just keep talking, but I'll keep talking. We've launched a campaign called the Grand Heist. It's the beginning of a questing campaign to get people excited about the DogeOS launch, and I love it because we're trying to do things a little differently. A lot of blockchains launch questing campaigns that are just airdrop farming. It's not really a game, and the quest is like, "Go to the testnet, do a million transactions, and maybe you'll get an airdrop someday." There's not really a point to that. We thought: there is a point in introducing the community to this ecosystem, to smart contracts and the different things you can do, for the first time. There is a point in helping the projects that are building get early users to test them. So how can we do it differently, make it more fun and a bit more useful? We came up with this really cool campaign, with a world-class team working on the apps, the website and the design. It's called the Grand Heist, and the idea is: Dogecoin is for the people, so let's steal the money from the evil bankers and bring it back to the people. It's a narrative around the Dogecoin vision. But what actually is it? The questing will be more thoughtful, more fun and more useful than any testnet airdrop questing we've seen before.
Beyond that, the goal is actually long term. It's not just a hype campaign for DogeOS. Many normies download our wallet and are introduced to Dogecoin for the first time, and they need to know: what can I do here? How do I do it? What is this? The basic questions about crypto and Dogecoin. If you download our wallet and don't know anything about crypto, we need to make it fun, engaging and simple to get on board and start trying things. It's one thing to say, "Just buy some Dogecoin, hold it, maybe send some to your friend." It's another to start learning about trading and different applications. So we see this as something that can last forever. This is the first test: onboard users, teach them about DogeOS and introduce the community to everything. But long term, we want to build a system where anyone who enters the Dogecoin world gets a gamified learning experience. I think of something like Duolingo, which makes it really fun, simple and engaging, and encourages you to keep going. Why shouldn't someone, years from now, be able to download this wallet and hear, "Hey, if you buy something with Dogecoin today, you'll earn some points, level up, maybe get a reward, earn some Dogecoin," with different quests, activities and challenges that really onboard you into the community? That's the ultimate vision, and the Grand Heist is our first taste. Yes, it's to bring users onto the testnet and get them trying apps, but I think people will see it's been done very thoughtfully. A lot of people are working really hard on it and are super passionate about it. We'll see the community's feedback and keep developing it into something where anyone, five years or maybe 50 years from now, who enters the Dogecoin world is incentivized and encouraged to learn, explore and build.
Hodl Up: Have you seen the Duolingo memes? So we're going to have Doge memes like that too?
Jordan: I'm a Duolingo user and a fan of the Duolingo memes.
Hodl Up: I love it, because, and I know it might sound counterintuitive, I'm not a huge fan of simpler UX in crypto. It makes sense for onboarding people, but as we said before this episode, people no longer have to learn about smart contracts or how things work. That makes sense, and they don't need to know. But I think you've figured out a way to keep the experience very simple and seamless while making sure users are educated and know what a specific button does, and what blockchain is in the first place. So I salute you for that. Now, what needs to happen for 2026 to be the year of the Doge? You said you'll be rolling out different features and updates, but I want to hear your take, and a prediction if you're allowed to give one.
Jordan: I can definitely give a prediction, though not for the Dogecoin price, which everyone loves to ask about, and I'm honestly not the guy to ask. I'm not a trader. But for the year of the Doge, what needs to happen? That's a really good question. The entire goal is to bring more Doge on-chain, and more Doge activity onto the network. What needs to happen for that? We've built the infrastructure, and we have teams building the applications, the DeFi and all of that to encourage it. But we do need to execute on the vision. We need to see, say, a billion dollars of Dogecoin come on-chain. Most Doge is held on exchanges or just sitting idle. Our goal is for it to be on-chain and put to productive use, whether that means people transacting and spending it, or being able to invest it and earn interest on their Doge savings. We need to actually make that happen. I think if we get a critical mass of Dogecoin flowing on-chain when we launch, it'll be the year of the Doge, and it will be one of the biggest liquidity unlocks in crypto. It's going to be absolutely enormous. Dogecoin today is worth, let's say, $15 billion, and as you said, it was worth $70 billion a few years ago. Anything is possible in this market. I could see it being worth hundreds of billions in a few years. That's a lot of money, and it's sitting idle right now. If we launch and have Doge flowing on-chain, the economic opportunity it creates for everyone in the Dogecoin community, builders, holders and traders alike, is huge. So that's what needs to happen for it to be the year of the Doge. It's not just that we've built all this, or that the app can do this or that now. The thesis has to be validated: that it encourages money to flow on-chain and creates real activity. Then the sky's the limit. You have billion-dollar stablecoins on Dogecoin, you have transactions happening, and Dogecoin as a global payments network starts to rival Visa and Mastercard. That's the potential, if the community buys into the idea.
Hodl Up: You've been building, as far as I can see, and I love it. But I'm asking you for a favor right now: could you find a team and invest in them to create a prediction market on Doge? Because I need it, I'm telling you. I love prediction markets, and I think it would benefit Dogecoin in the end, because, as we said, Doge is all about fun despite being a currency. My real question, by the way: do you think prediction markets will come to Dogecoin after DogeOS rolls out this year, or maybe next year?
Jordan: I think so, yes, this year. Just yesterday we met a team building something really cool in the prediction market space. So I'd say yes. It's inevitable, as we love to say in the Dogecoin world. I'd say this year.
Hodl Up: Well, Jordan, first of all, thank you so much for joining us today. In my opinion, everyone should start their crypto journey with Doge, the same way I did. Maybe they won't end up the way I did, maybe even better. But it is the face of crypto. It was the face of crypto for me, and for millions, I'm betting. So thank you so much for being here today, and for reminding us that this is the true internet currency, no matter how many Dogecoin killers appear. They're basically all dead at this point. And given all the products you've built and everything people can do within the ecosystem: the Doge prevails, as always.
Jordan: Yes, the Doge prevails. Exactly. All right, thank you guys so much. That was really fun.
Key takeaways
- Jordan Jefferson entered crypto around 2011 by building an early Bitcoin rewards platform, back when Bitcoin traded under $10.
- His team launched MyDoge as a Dogecoin-specific wallet with no marketing or funding, and the community quickly rallied behind it.
- DogeOS brings the EVM to Dogecoin, enabling DeFi, games, AI agents and safer token launchpads on the network.
- Jordan says nearly all DOGE trading happens on centralized exchanges today, and a simple on-chain DOGE/USD pair would change that.
- The Grand Heist questing campaign is designed as a gamified, Duolingo-style way to onboard people to DogeOS.
- His test for 2026 being "the year of the Doge" is meaningful DOGE liquidity, around a billion dollars, moving on-chain.
Turning the people's currency into a platform
In this Hodl Up episode, Jordan Jefferson, CEO of DogeOS, joins the hosts to explain how his team is building an application layer for Dogecoin. Dogecoin has one of crypto's largest and most loyal communities, yet it has never had smart contracts, DeFi or on-chain stablecoins.
"DogeOS is bringing the EVM to Doge: full programmability, turning Doge from just payment infrastructure into something that supports an entire ecosystem," Jordan said. The conversation covers his early Bitcoin days, the origins of MyDoge, Elon Musk and Dogecoin culture, the memecoin era, stablecoins on Doge and the Grand Heist campaign.
From early Bitcoin to MyDoge
A 2011 start
A friend introduced Jordan to Bitcoin around 2011. Together they built a rewards platform that paid users in Bitcoin for surveys and cashback. "Hopefully some of those people became millionaires from doing a five-minute survey," he joked. He initially dismissed Dogecoin as a joke, then came to see it as faster, cheaper "and, I think most importantly, more fun."
Building for tens of millions of holders
About four years before this recording, co-founder Bill pushed the team toward Dogecoin. "There are tens of millions of holders. Why is nobody building for them?" Jordan and CTO Alex built MyDoge, a Dogecoin wallet, and launched it with no marketing and no funding. Community members offered to test it, fix bugs and design graphics. "That's when I fell in love with Dogecoin."
Tipping on X quickly became the most popular feature, reviving Dogecoin's Reddit tipping roots. Within months, the team saw a night-market vendor in Indonesia accepting DOGE through MyDoge, without any marketing push.
Memes, Elon and the memecoin era
Jordan believes Elon Musk supports Dogecoin because he loves memes and saw early Tesla and SpaceX employees embrace it, and he rejected conspiracy theories about it. He also agreed that the recent memecoin mania was probably net negative. "So many people came into crypto, lost all their money and left."
He argued Dogecoin is different because it was never designed as a cash grab and its creators did not get rich from it. "It's not political or offensive. It's really funny and really cute." He called it "the Bitcoin of memes," a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that is hard to replicate.
What DogeOS enables
DogeOS aims to support a full ecosystem. Jordan highlighted teams building safer launchpads, such as Anoncoin and Starbase, to move memecoins from player-versus-player back to "us against the world." He also expects DeFi, fun Doge games, on-chain AI agents and vibe-coding tools that let the community build apps.
The table below summarizes the building blocks Jordan described.
| Area | What DogeOS enables |
|---|---|
| Smart contracts | EVM programmability on Dogecoin |
| DeFi | On-chain DOGE/USD trading and yield for holders |
| Stablecoins | Dollar assets living and moving on Dogecoin |
| Token launches | Safer, community-focused launchpads |
| Gaming and AI | Fun Doge games, on-chain agents and vibe-coding tools |
| Onboarding | Grand Heist questing and gamified learning in MyDoge |
Stablecoins and DeFi on Doge
Jordan called Dogecoin "the second-biggest proof-of-work network" and one of the most decentralized chains, which makes it a strong home for stablecoins. He said roughly half of SOL or ETH volume trades on-chain, while DOGE trades almost entirely on centralized exchanges. "That means exchanges capture all the value." An on-chain DOGE/USD pair would let holders provide liquidity and earn.
Unlike Bitcoin's hold-forever culture, the Doge community has always encouraged spending, helped by Dogecoin's small, perpetual inflation. That makes on-chain activity a natural fit.
The Grand Heist and the year of the Doge
The Grand Heist is DogeOS's questing campaign, themed around taking money from "evil bankers" and returning it to the people. Jordan wants it to go beyond airdrop farming, introducing users to real apps and becoming a long-term, Duolingo-style onboarding path.
He did not share launch dates, but said the new MyDoge, DogeOS mainnet and other products were all planned for the year. His bar for success: around a billion dollars of DOGE moving on-chain. "It will be one of the biggest liquidity unlocks in crypto."
