Amid the ongoing merge mining debate in the Dogecoin community, co-founder Billy Markus offers a non-partisan take on the subject. Merge mining, or Auxiliary Proof of Work (AuxPoW), allows users to mine two or more coins, including Dogecoin, with the same hashpower and proof-of-work without splitting.
Markus, who goes by “Shibetoshi Nakamoto” on X, believes removing merge mining is pointless and should not be done.
as a non-dev who has no investment in any scrypt altcoins and just thinks proposals should solve actual necessary problems and not random made up ones for self-serving reasons, i find this reply disingenuous
removing merge mining is pointless, so it shouldn’t be done
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) July 20, 2026
Markus shares this point of view as a non-developer who has no investment in any scrypt altcoins. It should be noted that Markus has been out of development work on Dogecoin since 2014.
Dogecoin was launched in late 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Palmer created the Dogecoin.com website while Markus worked as a solo developer on the first four releases. In 2014, both Palmer and Markus left the development efforts, while a Dogecoin Core Development team was formed, which has been maintaining and developing Dogecoin since then.
Scrypt altcoins, in the context of what the Dogecoin developer wrote, refer to coins that support merge mining, including Dogecoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, and several others. Litecoin and Dogecoin remain the largest and most profitable combination.
Markus once revealed selling all of his crypto in “one clip”; this included 50 Bitcoin, 440 Litecoin, and 6 million Dogecoin, with nothing left. If this still stands, it leaves him with no investments in scrypt altcoins, including Dogecoin and Litecoin.
‘Dumb and pointless’
The recent discussion around merge mining in the Dogecoin community has attracted differing opinions, with most in support. Supporters of the current model believe that merge mining allows miners to maximize their mining rewards.
In an earlier response on X, Markus maintained that Dogecoin should stay merge mined and that moving it off would be dumb and pointless.
Dogecoin and Litecoin implemented merge mining in August 2014. Before this time, Dogecoin faced potential security risks due to its smaller hashrate, making it vulnerable to 51% attacks because fewer miners secured the network.