Dogecoin Sees Sudden Spike As Elon Musk Sends Out Tweet. (Image source: File) Cryptocurrency Dogecoin witnessed spike in value after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he will eat McDonald’s Happy Meal on television only if the American fast-food chain accepts meme-based cryptocurrency. Happy Meal is a kid’s meal sold by McDonald’s in a red cardboard box with a yellow smiley face. The meal comes with a toy.
Dogecoin was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a faster but “fun” alternative to Bitcoin. It was started as a satire on the numerous fraud crypto coins that had sprung up at the time, and takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was viral several years ago.
Responding to Musk’s tweet, McDonald’s responded saying that they would but “only if Tesla accepts Grimacecoin.” And that’s everything some people needed to create an actual cryptocurrency called GrimaceCoin on the Binance Smart Chain and launch it on the market.
Only a few hours after it was created, the price of the cryptocurrency exploded, and it’s currently up around 6,000 per cent, at the time of this writing, down about 30 per cent from its peak.
It should be noted that the coin was created by an unknown group, and experts suggest that it’s highly possible that it may be some sort of a rug pull scam.
Meanwhile, the Tesla CEO is a staunch supporter of Dogecoin. This became clear after Musk said that Dogecoin is better for transactions as compared to Bitcoin. In a recent interview with Time magazine, the Tesla and SpaceX chief said when it comes to transactions per day, Dogecoin is a way better crypto coin. “The transaction value of Bitcoin is low and the cost per transaction is high. At least at a space level, it is suitable as a store of value. But fundamentally, Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency,” adding that even though Dogecoin was created as a silly joke, it is better suited for transactions.
Musk had also endorsed Dogecoin, over Ethereum saying that DOGE can be used to make Decentralised Finance (DeFi) more accessible to everyone.
More recently, Musk announced that Tesla will accept Dogecoin for merchandise on a test basis. “Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge and see how it goes,” he said in a tweet. Tesla sells merchandise such as apparel, belt buckle, mini models of its vehicles, quad bike ‘Cyberquad’ for kids and ‘Cyberwhistle’ modeled after its much-awaited Cybertruck.
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