Dogecoin could soon be used to pay for Tesla electric cars, judging by the results of an Elon Musk Twitter poll about the cryptocurrency.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO has long been one of Dogecoin's biggest advocates, repeatedly pushing its virtues on social media and proclaiming himself "The Dogefather." (opens in new tab) Now it looks like he's exploring further options to legitimize the cryptocurrency, asking his 53 million followers if they'd like the option to buy a Tesla EV with Doge.
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Musk posted a Twitter poll (opens in new tab) yesterday (May 11) asking simply: "Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?"
The poll, which just finished, had a total of 3,922,516 votes — and of those, an overwhelming 78.2% said they did want Tesla to accept Dogecoin.
Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?May 11, 2021
While this doesn't mean Tesla will definitely go ahead with the plan, there's plenty of other evidence that it's likely to happen. For starters, Tesla began accepting Bitcoin as payment back in March and made more money from selling the cryptocurrency than it did from car sales in the first quarter of 2021. Then, yesterday, Musk promptly announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin due to concerns over its environmental impact; Dogecoin uses a fraction of the energy and would be a greener solution.
What's more, on Monday SpaceX announced the DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon, which will see a Falcon 9 rocket take a satellite payload into Lunar orbit, paid for with… you guessed it, Dogecoin.
As SpaceX's Vice President of Commercial Sales Tom Ochinero said in a statement, the mission "will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and set the foundation for interplanetary commerce. We're excited to launch DOGE-1 to the Moon!"
Musk may also feel he has some work to do to build up Dogecoin's value following his guest hosting of SNL on Saturday (May 8).
The currency dropped by more than 30% in value after Musk called it a "hustle" during the show's Weekend Update section. That was the first serious fall it had endured for several weeks, after a stellar rise that had seen it climb to a record high of more than $0.70 per coin.
Given that it started the year valued at just $0.004876, its current value of around $0.50 still represents impressive growth of more than 10,000% in 2021, but some have questioned whether the "memecoin" has a long-term future.
Musk clearly believes that it does, and if Tesla starts accepting Doge as payment for the likes of the Tesla Roadster and the forthcoming Tesla Cybertruck, it could be the next step in securing its future.
