03/15 update below. This post was originally published on March 14
Elon Musk, the TeslaTSLA billionaire and owner of X, has waded back into the crypto world amid a massive price rebound (which has caused former president Donald Trump to make a shock bitcoin flip).
The bitcoin price has rocketed to over $73,000 per bitcoin, pushing up the wider ethereum, XRPXRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto market, amid speculation Wall Street giant BlackRock could be quietly eyeing a $90 trillion earthquake.
Now, as even JPMorgan’s bitcoin-skeptic chief executive Jamie Dimon begins to warm up to bitcoin, Elon Musk has teased the possibility of buying Tesla cars with his favorite meme-based bitcoin rival dogecoin—declaring “dogecoin to the moon” despite revealing what he thinks is the “true currency” last month.
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“When can you buy Tesla with dogecoin? At some point, I think we should enable that,” Musk said in a video uploaded by X user @dogeofficialceo, answering a question from the audience about buying a car with dogecoin. “You can buy Tesla merch with doge, which is cool. So, dogecoin to the moon.”
The dogecoin price has crashed back since it hit an all-time high in 2021 but has held on to most of its huge gains, confounding its critics, and is still a top ten cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $26 billion.
Musk went on to explain his support of dogecoin began when he toured a Tesla factory and was asked by workers to endorse dogecoin.
“You know what, dogecoin is the people’s crypto, I’ll support it,” Musk claims he said, recounting a similar experience at his rocket company SpaceX. “Lots of rich people are supporting bitcoin but if people [working in factories] want me to support dogecoin, I will. DogecoinDOGE is for you.”
03/15 update: The crypto market has slipped after rocketing higher over the last week. The bitcoin price suddenly dropped almost 10%, plunging it back below $70,000. Ethereum
ETH, XRP, solana and dogecoin have followed the bitcoin price lower, with the dogecoin price losing around 12% over the last 24 hours.
“Bitcoin is losing almost 7% in 24 hours, at one point wiping out last week’s gains and falling to $66,700,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, said via email.
“We note that the current area of active buying is below last week’s selling levels. Obviously, new historical highs are a trigger for selling. Some players are taking profits, which raises the question of whether there will be enough hot buyers at current levels or whether the majority will prefer to wait for a deeper correction.
The bitcoin price was “undercut by the rise in U.S. yields and the U.S. dollar that followed the hot producer-price inflation data,” Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG Australia, wrote in a note seen by Bloomberg.
Many crypto market watchers remain upbeat, however, confident this is merely a correction following the market’s huge rally over the last few months.
“Bitcoin
BTC looks very bullish even if it witnesses a much-delayed correction in the coming days,” Rachel Lin, the chief executive of Singapore-based decentralized derivatives exchange SynFutures, said in emailed comments.
“The recent surge in bitcoin prices has been too fast for the market to price correctly, so the a current correction is expected,” Greta Yuan, head of research at VDX, a Hong Kong-licensed exchange, said in a note to clients seen by Coindesk.
Musk’s comments have added almost 10% to the dogecoin price over the last 24 hours. In 2021, Musk’s regular posting about bitcoin, dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies would cause huge price swings.
When Tesla announced it had added bitcoin to its balance sheet in early 2021, it sent the bitcoin price sharply higher and sparked a wave of speculation that other companies could follow in its footsteps—though few ever did.
Tesla eventually sold most of its bitcoin but continues to hold almost 10,000 bitcoin worth around $700 million and accept dogecoin for merchandise. Musk has also said SpaceX holds some bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin and supports some crypto transactions.
Meanwhile, speculation continues to swirl that Tesla could add bitcoin and crypto support to his social media platform X, which has quietly been acquiring money-transmitter licenses across the U.S. and has said it plans to “revolutionize” payments in 2024.
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The huge crypto price surge has seen the combined bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto market rocket back toward its previous all time high of almost $3 trillion over the last year, sparking a wave of bullish predictions.
“We believe the crypto market is amidst unprecedented institutional adoption,” Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra wrote in a note seen by Coindesk. “We expect total crypto market cap to reach $7.5 trillion by 2025 versus $2.6 trillion today.”
The bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin and crypto price boom has been largely driven by a fleet of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) making their long-awaited Wall Street debut.
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