Elon Musk wreaked havoc in the crypto markets on May 13 after announcing that Tesla would be halting all BTC payments until the cryptocurrency’s mining becomes more environmentally sustainable.
Musk posited that while Tesla awaits bitcoin’s transition to renewable energy, the electric car maker would be exploring other cryptocurrencies that use less than 1% of bitcoin’s energy per transaction.
His tweet sent the crypto Twitter community into a frenzy of speculation as to which cryptocurrency Tesla could be looking into for Tesla to accept payments in. Notably, several cryptocurrencies have been trying to attract the attention of Musk without any success.
In a May 25 tweet, the South African-born centibillionaire elaborated why Dogecoin remains his favourite coin. According to Musk, cryptocurrencies like ethereum ETH), Solano (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT) don’t have dogs and memes like Dogecoin.
Dogecoin (DOGE) is widely known for its parabolic rise this year in the wake of Elon Musk’s repeated mentions of the canine-themed coin on social media. Musk recently indicated that he is working with Dogecoin developers to “improve system transaction efficiency”.
Musk’s comments on Dogecoin have become controversial. Some observers believe that his tweets steal the spotlight from deserving cryptos with real raison d’etre and development going on, while others deem it as outright market manipulation.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also recently criticized Musk’s plan to scale Doge 10x and reduce the cost of using the blockchain by 100X. In an article on Sunday titled “The Limits to Blockchain Scalability”, Buterin argued that it is incredibly difficult to significantly increase a crypto’s scalability and throughput “without leading to extreme centralization and compromising the fundamental properties that make a blockchain what it is.”
Nonetheless, Musk remains steadfast in his support of Dogecoin. In a tweet yesterday, he urged his followers to submit their development proposals on GitHub and Reddit.
