Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Accept Doge For Merch Payments

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been a long-time advocate of Dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency. He has personally invested in it, along with Bitcoin and Ether, and went as far as saying he sees dogecoin as the best cryptocurrency to use for trading.

Now, Musk tweeted on Tuesday that Tesla will make some of its merchandise buyable with Dogecoin on a test basis, adding that it then will "see how it goes."

Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

The price of dogecoin surged by as much as 25 percent within minutes of Musk's new announcement, once again proving how he can move markets with just a tweet.

'The Dogefather'

At this point, Musk is widely regarded as the unofficial CEO of Dogecoin, and he was instrumental in propelling the meme currency to an all-time high price of $0.7376. However, since hitting an all-time high in May, the altcoin has witnessed a rapid drop, and even Musk's rigorous pushing hasn't helped the meme currency recover, at least before now, although, the price is a long way from the heights it reached in May.

Earlier this week, Musk was named Time magazine's Person of the Year, and he stated in an interview that dogecoin functioned better than bitcoin as a method of payment since it could manage higher transaction volumes and did not have a set supply.

"Fundamentally, bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency," Musk told Time. "Even though it was created as a silly joke, dogecoin is better suited for transactions."

In addition to his most recent announcement, this could imply that he intends to accept cryptocurrencies as payment for electric vehicles. Tesla had previously done so with bitcoin but announced earlier this year that it was reversing that decision due to concerns about its environmental impact.

He has, however, also stated that if the bulk of Bitcoin mining goes green, he will eventually reintroduce the Bitcoin payment option. Until then, we will see Tesla's merchandise ranging from apparel and belt buckles to little models of its vehicles being sold with dogecoin, possibly making the meme-based cryptocurrency one of the high-performing cryptocurrencies in the future, thanks to Musk's strong social media advocacy.

This was a breaking story and was updated as information became available.

Disclaimer: Some members of the IE team, including editors of this article, have personally invested in a number of cryptocurrency and stock markets. However, their private investment viewpoints have no impact on editorial content.