Elon Musk said on Tuesday that Tesla would accept dogecoin as payment for some merchandise. Following the news, the cryptocurrency surged more than 20% to $0.22, before it fell back to about $0.19, according to CoinDesk data.
“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes,” Musk tweeted early morning on Tuesday.
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Musk, who was named TIME Magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year, told TIME on Monday that dogecoin is better suited for transactions than bitcoin.
“The transaction volume of [bitcoin] is low and the cost per transaction is high,” Musk said. “Fundamentally, bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency.”
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“The total transaction flow you can do with dogecoin, like transactions per day, has a much higher potential than bitcoin,” according to Musk.
Some bitcoin supporters pushed back, citing the Lightning Network, which aims to enable faster transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.