Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency started as a joke, jumped on Tuesday after billionaire Elon Musk tweeted about whether Tesla Inc. should accept it for payments.
Musk, who’s been a vocal supporter of the Shiba Inu-themed token, posted a survey on Twitter asking “Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?” Within about thirty minutes, the survey had 750,000 respondents.
The token jumped from around 46 cents to as high as 54 cents after Musk’s tweet, according to Coinmarketcap.com
The fourth-largest cryptocurrency has proved famously volatile after the Tesla CEO appeared on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend and jokingly called Dogecoin “a hustle.” Its market capitalization has fallen from as high as $95 billion to $67 billion currently.
SpaceX, Musk’s commercial rocket firm, will embark on a Moon voyage in 2022 carrying a mini-satellite from Geometric Energy Corp. that’s been paid for entirely in Dogecoin.
And it wouldn’t be Tesla’s first foray into cryptocurrencies. The company announced in March that it would accept Bitcoin as payment for its electric cars, a month after disclosing a $1.5 billion investment in the largest virtual token.