Tesla Founder and CEO Elon Musk has been turning heads with his increasing interest in cryptocurrency. Amidst all this, Japanese dog breed Shiba Inu-themed cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, also gained special interest from the SpaceX founder.
Musk has been sharing a series of tweets promoting Dogecoin, which initially began as a cryptocurrency joke. Founded in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin is an open-source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency.
Tesla founder’s interest in Dogecoin has led to an increase in said cryptocurrency’s prices. Musk has also added the hashtag #bitcoin to his Twitter bio, which was instrumental in briefly pushing the price of the cryptocurrency to nearly 20 percent.
Taking to Twitter today, Elon Musk said, “I just set up some little Doge mining rigs with my kids. It was fun.” With this, Dogecoin’s prices briefly shot up to $0.58990.
In an earlier tweet, he said that “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto,” and had shared an instructional video about the dog-themed digital currency. Earlier, he had posted a picture of himself holding a Shiba Inu dog, which is the main theme of the digital currency.
Musk has been a staunch supporter of cryptocurrency use. Earlier this month, Tesla opened the possibility of accepting Bitcoins as payments for its products and has already bought $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
In its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the electric vehicle giant said Bitcoin would provide more flexibility to further diversify and maximise the returns on its products. On February 8, when Tesla announced this development, Bitcoin’s value jumped by 14 percent to as high as $44,000, and Ethereum jumped seven percent.
Post the announcement, Bitcoin reached new heights last week as the cryptocurrency crossed the $50,000 mark.
According to reports, during his interaction on the social media chat site Clubhouse, Elon said, “I do, at this point, think Bitcoin is a good thing, and I am a supporter of Bitcoin.”
Back at home, the Indian government, during the Union Budget announcement on February 1, said that it will consider a bill that prohibits all private cryptocurrencies. The bill is expected to create an official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India, according to a bulletin of the Lok Sabha for the Budget session.
