Musk Sends Dogecoin Soaring Again as Tesla Begins Accepting the Crypto for Merch
Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet — and now, Time’s “Person of the Year” — recently tweeted that Tesla would start accepting Dogecoin for purchases of some merchandise. The tweet sent Doge soaring once again, as Musk’s tweets often have significant economic repercussions, both in the stock market and on many crypto exchanges.
“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes,” Musk tweeted on Dec. 14.
Doge rose more than 20% over the past 24 hours, and is up 5688.2% over the course of the past year, per Coingecko.
The tweet came on the heels of a Time video interview in which Musk said that, even though Doge was created as a “silly joke,” it’s “better suited for transactions” than Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency. Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions. The total transaction flow that you do with Dogecoin, like transactions per day, has much higher potential than Bitcoin,” Musk said in the Time video.
The Twitter account for Doge was quick to reply, reposting the video and saying “Hey, congrats @elonmusk on being @TIME ‘s Person of the Year and for dropping some straight fax about #dogecoin — much, much wow!”
Musk has been professing his love for Doge for a long time, sending the crypto on a roller coaster following each of his tweets.
“Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted in May, for example.
He also notably sent the crypto crashing following his “Saturday Night Live” appearance, in which he attempted to pump it up.
Dogecoin was created as a joke — its name is a reference to a popular internet meme. There is no limit on the maximum supply of Dogecoin, according to Coinbase.
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