Dogecoin was created to be the ultimate crypto meme, but the world’s richest man takes it very seriously.
The world’s richest man and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, is a well-known Dogecoin supporter, but in a recent interview on the Full Send Podcast the said that the Dogecoin blockchain had a much greater transactional capacity than Bitcoin.
He also pointed out that DOGE can currently be used not only to buy merchandise at Tesla and SpaceX but as a means of payment at other large companies such as The Boring Company, which offers subway transportation services in Las Vegas.
Dogecoin 1- Bitcoin 0
Musk explained that Dogecoin transactions are completed in 60 seconds while bitcoin transactions take approximately 10 minutes to be completed. For Musk, this is enough for the meme coin to be considered a better payment system. The fact that it has a light-hearted community also seems to help:
“I’m mainly supporting Doge frankly, because I think Doge has the memes and dogs and it seems to have a sense of humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously. I think actually weirdly even though Doge was just designed to be like this ridiculous joke currency, but the actual total transactional throughput capability of Doge is much higher than bitcoin.”
He further emphasized that Dogecoin’s inflationary factor, which allows 5 billion coins to be created annually, may be better in the long term to establish its use as a transactional currency, a far cry from Bitcoin and its maximum supply of 21 million BTC.
“The fact that there’s five billion dollars created every year is actually good for using it as a transactional currency.”
One of the disadvantages of deflation is that it encourages hoarding, as the perceived real value of the currency increases over time. This problem could affect the bitcoin economy in the future, considering that according to studies conducted in 2013 by the University of San Diego and George Mason University, more than 60% of all bitcoin mined have not moved since 2018.
Musk And The Crypto Scams
Another issue the billionaire discussed is the growing number of scams around cryptocurrencies. He warned that his Twitter account is “targeted by a lot of scammers” due to his high interaction with his followers.
Elon Musk’s influence on the crypto community is more than proven – scientifically proven, in fact. A study by Dr. Lennart Ante for the Blockchain Research Lab revealed that the “Musk effect” is real. Every time Elon Musk tweets about Dogecoin, it tends to pump the prices of this cryptocurrency almost immediately.
And in fact, the announcements of Tesla buying Bitcoin and stopping its acceptance as a means of payment marked the beginning of the most recent strong bullish and bearish trends for Bitcoin.
He also clarified that he has nothing to do with other meme coins such as “Elon” and other Elon-themed cryptocurrencies ranging from Dogelon Mars to more creative names.
Therefore, although Musk supports two meme cryptocurrencies (Shiba Inu and Dogecoin), he has no interest in any other cryptocurrency —whether it is inspired by him or any other cute dog breed.