In January 2014, Jamaica’s two-man bobsled team had qualified for Sochi and, in public, had almost no money to go. r/dogecoin noticed. The Dogecoin Foundation stood up a drive the desks called Dogesled. Within days the community raised on the order of 26.5–27 million DOGE — about $30,000 at the prints of the week — converted it to bitcoin, and handed it to the team’s Crowdtilt campaign. That is not a whitepaper. It is the first time most of the English-speaking internet heard that a Shiba coin could move a body across an ocean.
What it was
Dogesled is the name the Foundation and the wires used for a January 2014 crowdfund: take a coin six weeks old, point it at Jamaica’s returning two-man sled, and see whether a Reddit could buy an Olympic trip. The athletes were Winston Watts, then 46, making a comeback after missing Torino and Vancouver, and brakeman Marvin Dixon, 30. They had qualified. Watts told the Associated Press the fundraising effort was “at zero.” NPR dated that quote to the Saturday before 22 January. Four days later the internet had overshot the $80,000 public goal.
This encyclopedia treats the drive as an act, not a miracle. Cool Runnings (1993) had already taught the planet the 1988 Calgary joke. Devon Harris, from that original Jamaica National Bobsled Team, took public control of the Crowdtilt campaign. Dogecoin was one pipe into a hat that also included ordinary dollars. Cite the pipe. Do not pretend the coin invented the team.
What people confuse
| Misconception | Record |
|---|---|
| Dogecoin paid the whole $80,000 | Desks put the DOGE conversion around $30,000. Crowdtilt and Indiegogo took the rest. BusinessWire: Crowdtilt already had about $70,000 in dollars when the ~$30,000 DOGE gift put the official campaign over $100,000. |
| They won a medal | They went. They slid. The Gleaner, 18 February 2014: best heat last, still the foot of the ladder; top-20 only got a fourth run. |
| Palmer drove the sled | Palmer and Liam Butler (Laika1954) appear in the conversion-and-tax logistics. Watts and Dixon sat in the sled. |
| This is the same as Doge4Water | Bobsled is January, spectacle, Sochi. Doge4Water is March, World Water Day, two wells in Kenya’s Tana River. Same winter. Different hat. |
How a subreddit bought a ticket
The surviving r/dogecoin thread is titled “Let’s send the Jamaican bobsled team to the winter Olympics!” The Foundation posted that it was launching an initiative. Donations stacked in public: thousands of DOGE at a time, transaction IDs pasted as receipts, a running joke that even 1,500 DOGE would matter if the whole sub showed up. The Mary Sue, 20 January 2014, said the pot hit 26 million DOGE within hours of the page going up, and that the DOGE/BTC rate jumped about 50% on the frenzy — a side-effect, not the point.
Conversion was the unglamorous half. US tax treatment made dumping into a personal dollar account inconvenient; Butler said so in public. Palmer and Butler confirmed a transfer into bitcoin. The Mary Sue: about 35 BTC, then ~$30,830. BusinessWire, 20 January: 27 million DOGE into 38 BTC, donated through Crowdtilt. Official Dogecoin history still rounds to 26.5 million DOGE, worth around $30,000 at the time. This site will not baptize a single satoshi. It will say: tens of millions of DOGE, mid-thirties of BTC, a thirty-thousand-dollar class gift, named sources.
TechCrunch, 26 January, walked the other number people remember: after three days the Crowdtilt campaign sat at $129,587 from nearly 3,000 people in 50 states and 52 countries, average gift $34.60, including the Dogecoin conversion. Crowdtilt called it one of the fastest campaigns to goal they had seen; at peaks, $3,000 in 60 seconds. Devon Harris wrote that the money would cover training, board, track fees, equipment, and shipping the sled to Russia. NPR’s later tally of two online campaigns put the combined internet hat above $184,000. The coin’s share stayed the $30,000 class.
Can confirm we’ve just transferred over to 35 BTC in total! Olympics here we come!Dogecoin Foundation, r/dogecoin, January 2014
What happened in Sochi
They arrived. That is the sentence the drive was for. The two-man event is four runs if you are in the top 20 after three. Watts and Dixon were not. Wikipedia’s Sochi two-man table lists Jamaica (JAM-1) 27th on three heats: 58.42, 58.81, 58.17, total 2:55.40. The Jamaica Gleaner, 18 February 2014, called it the foot of the ladder among teams that finished, best time saved for last. Serbia had withdrawn. Russia’s pair would later be stripped of gold in the doping years; that is another encyclopedia. This one records: a 46-year-old pilot and a 30-year-old brakeman used a joke-coin hat to stand on a Russian ice track.
The publicity was the second product. PBS, The Guardian, NPR, TechCrunch, The Mary Sue — the same week a six-week-old coin learned what a wire looked like. Later carnival (the Dogecar, Musk) stands on that lesson: the internet will fund a story it already knows how to tell. Cool Runnings had done the teaching. Dogecoin paid for a sequel ticket.
What it left in the culture
Ben Doernberg, on the Foundation board, told CoinDesk weeks later that the Olympic project was “fun and zany” and that they also wanted “more serious charity.” Doge4Water and Doge4Kids (service dogs, 4 Paws for Ability) are that sentence becoming a calendar. Official dogecoin.com history still leads its charity paragraph with 26.5 million DOGE for the sled. The inscription era inherited the slogan Do Only Good Everyday and, too often, none of the receipts. The receipts are here.
Questions
Did Dogecoin send the whole Jamaican team to Sochi?
It sent a large, fast, well-documented slice — about $30,000 after converting ~26.5–27 million DOGE to bitcoin — into a Crowdtilt campaign that also took ordinary dollars. Watts and Dixon flew. The hat was bigger than the coin.
Did they medal?
No. Three heats, no fourth-run cut. Going was the victory the drive bought.
Sources
Primary texts for this chapter. The full index lives on Doginals sources.
- History of Dogecoin — Dogecoin
- Let's send the Jamaican bobsled team to the winter Olympics! — r/dogecoin
- Jamaican bobsled team raises $30,000 in Dogecoin — PBS
- How cryptocurrency saved Jamaica’s hopes for bobsled gold — TechCrunch
- Crowdtilt accepts $30K Dogecoin donation — BusinessWire
- Online donors send Jamaican bobsled team to Sochi — NPR
- Jamaica’s bobsledders end Sochi dream — Jamaica Gleaner
- Bobsleigh at the 2014 Winter Olympics – Two-man — Wikipedia
- Dogecoin raises $30,000 for Jamaican bobsled team — The Mary Sue