It’s always a good time to hype Dogecoin for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Just shortly after Tesla’s new supercharger station opened in Santa Monica, Musk tweeted that you could pay with the crypto — but he didn’t mean for charging your car.
By Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy
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Rayan Zohoury, founder of Tesla’s first app, TeslaConsole, posted a picture of the supercharging station with the caption: “Ten minutes after the new Santa Monica Superchargers opened and they’re already almost full!”
Musk tweeted in response: “And futuristic diner / drive-in theater planned for Hollywood area!”
“And, of course, you can pay in Ðoge,” he added, noting that customers could use crypto as a payment option for food, drinks and merchandise at the Hollywood location, which is being built, not at the charging station, which the post seemed to imply.
Musk’s reply took Doge into positive territory before pulling back, Benzinga reported. However, on the morning of Feb. 21, Doge was down 7.7%, according to CoinMarketCap. It’s also down 81.5% from its all-time high of $0.73, reached on May 8, 2021, according to CoinGecko.
Despite recent downturns, the crypto’s up 145% for the year.
Musk, the richest man on the planet and Time’s “Person of the Year,” has been touting Doge for months on various platforms, whether on Twitter repeatedly, or during his “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig.
Most recently, Musk tweeted that Tesla would start accepting Dogecoin for purchases of some merchandise.
“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes,” Musk posted on Dec. 14.
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“Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency. Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions. The total transaction flow that you do with Dogecoin, like transactions per day, has much higher potential than Bitcoin,” Musk said in the Time video at the time.
