A Tesla for your Dogecoin?

It seems that the running joke surrounding Dogecoin may be driving next, with Tesla (-1.88%) CEO Elon Musk tweeting about whether the electric vehicle maker should start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for its cars.

Musk has been a vocal supporter of the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, posting a Twitter (+2.07%) survey asking “Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?” and had some 750,000 respondents within 30 minutes.

Despite choppiness in Dogecoin in the run-up to Musk’s hosting of comedy show Saturday Night Live, Musk’s tweet sent Dogecoin surging to as high as US$0.54 at one stage before pulling back.

In a world of straight-laced cryptocurrencies that are trying to solve a variety of centralization problems, Dogecoin is an unabashed joke that has laughed its way to the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap.

Dogecoin has fallen from a high of US$95 billion in market cap to around US$65 billion currently.

But lest investors think that Dogecoin has already been to the moon, it is literally going to the moon, with SpaceX, Musk’s commercial rocket firm, embarking on a moon voyage in 2022, carrying a mini-satellite that’s been paid for entirely using Dogecoin.

In March, Tesla announced that it would accept BTC as payment for its electric vehicles, a month after disclosing a US$1.5 billion investment in the cryptocurrency.

Musk’s influence in the cryptocurrency sector is unparalleled.

Given that no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, the anonymous creator of BTC, Musk has provided the crypto faithful with a galvanizing figure to rally around.

Trading in Dogecoin was particularly volatile ahead of Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance, with the meme cryptocurrency correcting sharply as he called it a “hustle” on the show.

In a skit on Saturday Night Live, Musk assumed the character of a financial expert, repeatedly quizzed about Dogecoin.

After delivering textbook answers, when asked whether Dogecoin was a hoax, still in character, Musk answered,

“Yeah, it’s a hustle.”

But Musk also ended the skit howling, “To the moon!” a reference he repeated about the SpaceX announcement where a mini satellite would be launched, literally to the moon, paid for entirely with Dogecoin.

Despite the jokes, Dogecoin has made some early investors a serious amount of money.

Created in 2013, Dogecoin has risen over 21,000% in the past year alone, based on data from cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko.