Elon Musk says Tesla will start accepting dogecoin

Elon Musk shared this image of a mock gold Tesla Cybertruck adorned with the dogecoin logo, saying ‘imbued gold/bronze clour would be sick’ (Gail Alfar/ Twitter)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the electric car maker will begin accepting payments in dogecoin for some products.

The announcement comes just a few months after Tesla backtracked on its decision to accept payments in bitcoin, citing environmental concerns about the way the cryptocurrency is mined.

“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

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The price of dogecoin surged following the announcement, rising more than 14 per cent in the space of just a few minutes.

The tech billionaire has been a long-time advocate for the meme-based cryptocurrency, and has personally invested in it. In May, he asked his Twitter followers if Tesla should accept payments in dogecoin, with more than three quarters of respondents saying yes.

Earlier this week, Musk said that dogecoin worked better than bitcoin as a form of payment as it could handle higher transaction volumes and does not have a fixed supply.

“Even though it was created as a silly joke, dogecoin is actually better suited for transactions,” he told Time magazine, who named him Person of the Year 2021 on Monday.

“It is slightly inflationary... but that’s actually good as it encourages people to spend rather than to hoard it as a store of value.”

Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus responded to the comments by tweeting: “I think it’s safe to say the cofounder of PayPal might know a little something about money, so y’know, it may be interesting to take a listen.”