Elon Musk has asked his Twitter followers if Tesla should consider Dogecoin as a form of payment for its vehicles.
The idea received immense support from his followers: 400,000 people voted in a poll within 10 minutes of it being posted. Almost 80% of those who responded said yes.
Any corporate funding from Tesla will almost certainly help to drive the development of the cryptocurrency, which was developed as a joke in the first place and is named after an internet-famous shiba inu.
Tesla, on the other hand, will have to deal with the volatile value of the digital currency.
It has grown nearly 10,000% in 2021, but has also seen a lot of dramatic drops.
There’s also DOGE-1 Mission
The proposal comes just a day after Mr Musk said his other company, SpaceX, would be launching a satellite called “Doge-1” to the Moon next year. The mission would be fully paid for in the cryptocurrency, allowing it to become both the “first crypto” and “first meme” in space, he noted.
Tesla has already begun accepting bitcoin as payment, and bought a huge tranche of the cryptocurrency earlier this year. At times, it has been making considerably more profit from gains in bitcoin’s value than it has from its core business of selling vehicles.
Experts noted that the backing of Tesla helped give significant legitimacy to bitcoin, and that it likely helped drive some of its recent growth. In the few minutes after Tesla made its announcement in February that it would support bitcoin, the price rose 14 per cent and took it to what was then an all-time high.
Mr Musk’s show of support for Dogecoin comes after a relatively weak few days for the price of the cryptocurrency. After hitting an all-time high on Saturday, it has gradually dropped in price, and is down 0.6 per cent over the last 24 hours.
Much of the mechanics behind that rise and fall seemed to be the result of Mr Musk’s widely trailed appearance on Saturday Night Live. In advance of the show, the price had gradually risen – but then dropped over the course of the actual broadcast, seemingly because Mr Musk only gave light and muted mention of it.
But Mr Musk’s tweet about Tesla’s possible support for the currency helped it win back some of that value. The price jumped about 17 per cent in the minutes after his post.
Read now: Elon Musk’s SNL Appearance Drags Dogecoin Valuation
