Tesla will soon accept Dogecoin—the internet’s favorite memecoin—as payment for some items.
Dogecoin’s value skyrocketed in 2021. Coinbase pricing data puts the coin’s value at less than a cent for most of its history, but it peaked at $0.74 in May, and it’s worth about $0.18 at time of writing. That doesn’t seem like much, yet Dogecoin still has a $24.1 billion market cap.
Those price increases have allowed Dogecoin to go mainstream. Newegg announced in April that it would accept payment in Dogecoin, for example, and AMC said in November that it plans to support the memecoin as well. Now Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his company is joining in:
Musk hasn’t said which Tesla products will be purchasable with Dogecoin. The company sells a variety of apparel (hoodies, tee-shirts, etc.), as well as miniature versions of its electric vehicles and more unique items such as the “Cyberwhistle” and the “Cyberquad” ATV for kids.
The move is in keeping with Musk and Tesla’s brand image. (See: the two “cyber” products mentioned above.) Musk has become a vocal proponent of cryptocurrency, and Tesla briefly accepted payment via Bitcoin earlier this year, though it later halted the practice, ostensibly over concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.”
Dogecoin buyers seem to have responded favorably to Musk’s announcement. Coinbase’s price data shows that Dogecoin was trading for $0.16 at 5:25 a.m. ET. Musk tweeted at 5:34 a.m., and by 5:40 a.m., the price rose to $0.20, peaking at $0.23 at 6:55 a.m. before starting to dip.
All of which is to say that it took eight years for one Dogecoin to be worth a single penny, but now a vague tweet about a company selling merch can lead to a seven-cent price bump in less than 90 minutes. Whether that makes the coin more or less of a meme is a matter of opinion.
