Elon Musk runs the world’s leading electric car company and supports popular retail-driven coin DOGE. In an interview with TIME, the billionaire explained why he ranked DOGE higher in his book than other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, the largest market cap. The last couple of weeks has been bloody for cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin itself has lost about 30% of its value.
High Daily Volumes And Low Fees
In his discussion with the famous tabloid, the Tesla Chief, just after he was named Person Of The Year, revealed that from his experience, he touted Dogecoin as a preferable means of exchange. It is important to recall that one of his first startups was a payment solution that morphed into PayPal, which he once ran. However, he added that, in his opinion, the retail championed token also had more potential.
Continuing to use Bitcoin as a standard for most other crypto pointed out that the most dominant crypto could not have high trading volumes and had high fees. Musk revealed that these features were not ideal for a medium of exchange, stating that it was more suited to an inflationary hedge. However, he added that the joke coin excelled where these others failed.
The Tesla Chief declared the meme token to be most suited for the role of widely used currency. He pointed out that DOGE was capable of much more volume daily, had lower fees, and had more room for development. In conversation, the billionaire also revealed that he didn’t believe that crypto would take the place of central bank-issued currencies. The comment seems to differ from a recent opinion from Block CEO Jack Dorsey.
In a Twitter thread this week, rap star Cardi B had questioned if crypto would replace the dollar. The former Twitter Chief responded in the affirmative, hailing Bitcoin to be the one. Notably, Dogecoin Co-founder Billy Markus also responded by arguing for DOGE’s stability over the dollar with a meme.
DOGE Now An Accepted Payment Option For Tesla Payments
Elon Musk has since taken to microblogging platform Twitter to reveal that Tesla will be receiving DOGE for some of the company’s merchandise. In addition, billionaire Mark Cuban, a known believer in Dogecoin, also did something similar early this year, allowing Dallas Maverick fans to purchase the team’s merchandise with the token. This year, cryptocurrencies have seen a large boost in adoption in the wake of the pandemic.
Bitcoin, for one, has seen a lot of love from institutional investors, with companies like MicroStrategy doubling down on their Bitcoin stash with every opportunity. In addition, many see Bitcoin as a digital version of gold and a good hedge against inflation due to its fixed and predictable supply. On the other hand, Dogecoin has a slightly inflationary nature, but Musk touts this as the very reason why the meme coin will rise above the others in payments. He noted, however, that the inflationary system in Dogecoin is different from fiat leading to eventual reduction.
