Dogecoin helping pay for Jamaican bobsled team to compete in Sochi
When the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team was struggling to find funds to pay their way to Calgary, they tried a lot of things – at least they did in the 1993 movie loosely based on their story, Cool Runnings. They tried corporate sponsors, a kissing booth and singing and dancing in the street, but none of these were enough. In the end, Junior sold his car and the team made it to ice cold Calgary. What they definitely didn’t try was crowd funding their Olympic appearance.
Four years ago the team was there watching. They didn’t qualify to compete in Vancouver, but they went there to learn and be inspired. On Saturday Olympic organizers announced Jamaica did qualify, but they were short on cash.
“We’re pretty good,” says pilot Winston Watt to The Associated Press. “We’re not there with the rest of the world, of course. But if we had some more sources for funding, we’d have a better chance.”
Their "better chance" arrived only hours later. Liam Butler and other members of the Dogecoin community got involved.
“I grew up in the 90s so that (movie) was on every school bus trip,” says Butler to Kevin Newman Live. “I’ve probably seen the move a hundred times.”
Butler runs the Dogecoin foundation along with the currency’s initial creators Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus. Dogedoin is a crypto-currency similar to bitcoin. When members of the Dogecoin community heard about the Jamaican troubles, they knew what they had to do. They launched a fundraising campaign and within a couple days they had raised the equivalent of about $30,000, which is enough to send the team to Sochi. They appropriately called their campaign Dogesled.
