Tesla to accept dogecoin as payment for merch, Elon Musk says

Tesla, the electric carmaker, will accept dogecoin as payment for merchandise on a test basis.

The announcement by Tesla chief Elon Musk on Tuesday sent the meme-based cryptocurrency up 24 per cent.

“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes,” Musk said.

Dogecoin raced up to $0.20 after the tweet. Musk’s tweets on the cryptocurrency, including the one where he called it the “people’s crypto”, have helped the coin soar 5,859 per cent over the past year, according to data from Coinbase website.

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Tesla sells apparel, ‘Giga Texas’ belt buckles and mini models of its vehicles as well as quirky limited-edition items such as the ‘Cyberwhistle’, which is modelled after its much-awaited cybertruck. It recently launched a quad bike, Cyberquad, for children, also modelled after the truck.

In a Twitter poll in May, Musk had asked users if they wanted Tesla to accept dogecoin. He had called dogecoin a ‘hustle’ during his guest-host spot on the Saturday Night Live comedy sketch TV show in May.

He has often endorsed dogecoin and said it is better for transactions, most recently in an interview to Time magazine, which controversially named him ‘Person of the Year’ for 2021 on Monday. The magazine called Musk a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P T Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars”.