Elon Musk, the TeslaTSLA billionaire and owner of X, has waded back into the crypto world amid a massive price rebound (which has caused former president Donald Trump to make a shock bitcoin flip).
The bitcoin price has rocketed to over $73,000 per bitcoin, pushing up the wider ethereum, XRPXRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto market, amid speculation Wall Street giant BlackRock could be quietly eyeing a $90 trillion earthquake.
Now, as even JPMorgan’s bitcoin-skeptic chief executive Jamie Dimon begins to warm up to bitcoin, Elon Musk has teased the possibility of buying Tesla cars with his favorite meme-based bitcoin rival dogecoin—declaring “dogecoin to the moon” despite revealing what he thinks is the “true currency” last month.
Sign up now for the free CryptoCodex—A daily five-minute newsletter for traders, investors and the crypto-curious that will get you up to date and keep you ahead of the bitcoin and crypto market bull run
“When can you buy Tesla with dogecoin? At some point, I think we should enable that,” Musk said in a video uploaded by X user @dogeofficialceo, answering a question from the audience about buying a car with dogecoin. “You can buy Tesla merch with doge, which is cool. So, dogecoin to the moon.”
The dogecoin price has crashed back since it hit an all-time high in 2021 but has held on to most of its huge gains, confounding its critics, and is still a top ten cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $26 billion.
Musk went on to explain his support of dogecoin began when he toured a Tesla factory and was asked by workers to endorse dogecoin.
“You know what, dogecoin is the people’s crypto, I’ll support it,” Musk claims he said, recounting a similar experience at his rocket company SpaceX. “Lots of rich people are supporting bitcoin but if people [working in factories] want me to support dogecoin, I will. Dogecoin is for you.”
Musk’s comments have added almost 10% to the dogecoin price over the last 24 hours. In 2021, Musk’s regular posting about bitcoin, dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies would cause huge price swings.
When Tesla announced it had added bitcoin to balance sheet in early 2021, it sent the bitcoin price sharply higher and sparked a wave of speculation that other companies could following in its footsteps—though few ever did.
Tesla eventually sold most of its bitcoin but continues to hold almost 10,000 bitcoin worth around $700 million and accept dogecoin for merchandise. Musk has also said SpaceX holds some bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin and supports some crypto transactions.
Meanwhile, speculation continues to swirl that Tesla could add bitcoin and crypto support to his social media platform X, which has quietly been acquiring money-transmitter licenses across the U.S. and has said it plans to “revolutionize” payments in 2024.
Sign up now for CryptoCodex—A free, daily newsletter for the crypto-curious
The huge crypto price surge has seen the combined bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto market rocket back toward its previous all time high of almost $3 trillion over the last year, sparking a wave of bullish predictions.
“We believe the crypto market is amidst unprecedented institutional adoption,” Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra wrote in a note seen by Coindesk. “We expect total crypto market cap to reach $7.5 trillion by 2025 versus $2.6 trillion today.”
The bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto price boom has been largely driven by a fleet of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) making their long-awaited Wall Street debut.
Follow me on Twitter.
