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Tesla to accept dogecoin as payment for merchandise, says Elon Musk

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Tesla founder and CEO, Elon Musk

Tesla founder and CEO, Elon Musk

Dubai - Besides dogecoin, Musk has also been a vocal supporter of Bitcoin

Published: Tue 14 Dec 2021, 5:57 PM

Updated: Tue 14 Dec 2021, 6:08 PM

Tesla founder and CEO, Elon Musk, on Tuesday said that the electric car maker will be accepting payments in dogecoin for certain products.

“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes”, Musk said in a tweet on Twitter.

Soon afterwards, the value of Dogecoin jumped 33 per cent. Musk has been a long-time supporter of the meme-based cryptocurrency, which has often witnessed price fluctuations in response to his tweets. Earlier in May this year, Musk hinted at Tesla accepting the digital token, with its now iconic Shiba Inu theme, when he asked his followers if Tesla should start accepting payments in the digital currency. Nearly 80 per cent of respondents in his poll answered in the positive.

“Even though it was created as a silly joke, dogecoin is actually better suited for transactions,” he had told Time magazine.

Besides dogecoin, Musk has also been a vocal supporter of Bitcoin. In February 2021, Bitcoin jumped 16 per cent to all-time-highs of $44,795.20 after documents filed with the SEC revealed that Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency.

“We may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future,” the Tesla filing said.

Bitcoin then rose five percent in March 2021, after Musk announced that customers can purchase a Tesla using Bitcoin. “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin”, he said in a tweet.

“Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.”, he elaborated in another tweet.

At the time of that tweet, several users on the social media platform replied asking when they would be able to make the purchase using dogecoin.

However, Musk soon pulled back on his announcement in May 2021, citing Bitcoin’s “insane” energy usage as the main reason for suspending the Bitcoin payment service.

“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.” he said in a post on Twitter.

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.”, the post said.

In another shocker, Musk offloaded around $906 million worth of Tesla shares on Monday, new filings showed. This brings his total sales since early November to almost $13 billion. Tesla shares were down nearly five per cent on Monday, in line with technology losses and market concerns revolving around the omicron variant of Covid-19.

In true Musk fashion, the Tesla founder had asked his followers on Twitter to weigh in on his decision to sell shares.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” he asked in a poll.

Tesla shares are up 36 per cent year to date, but have lost 15 per cent in December.

rohma@khaleejtimes.com



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