As Bitcoin And Ethereum Collapse, Elon Musk Brands Radical Dogecoin Plan A ‘Great Idea’

May 30, 2021

Bitcoin, ethereum and most major cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply over the last week as the crypto market roller coaster rolls on.

The bitcoin price has fallen almost 10% since last weekend despite rallying earlier this week amid a slew of positive bitcoin and crypto headlines emanating from the annual Consensus conference. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, has lost 50% of its value in two weeks after surging to an all-time high in mid-May.

Now, as bitcoin and ethereum extend their losses, Tesla
TSLA
billionaire Elon Musk has called a tongue-in-cheek plan to harness the heat generated by mining dogecoin a "great idea"—helping the dogecoin price climb off its recent low.

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"A hot tub that's heated by mining dogecoin," bitcoin and crypto trading app Blockfolio said via Twitter. "Elon Musk, I don't care how, just make it happen."

"Great idea," Musk responded, almost immediately lifting the dogecoin price from lows of 28 cents. Dogecoin, a meme-based cryptocurrency rival to bitcoin that was originally created as a "joke," has surged this year as investors buy up the digital tokens in the hope they will continue to appreciate in value.

While the suggestion that heat generated from the creation of dogecoin tokens could be harnessed may seem frivolous, it's an issue that has gripped the bitcoin and crypto community in recent months.

Musk has caused chaos on the bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets with his criticism of bitcoin's huge energy use—pulling Tesla's support of bitcoin payments until the issue was addressed and calling the North America Bitcoin Mining Council's plan to promote the use of renewable energy "promising."

The bitcoin network currently uses more electricity than the entire country of The Netherlands, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, with bitcoin's carbon footprint soaring along with its price this year. The energy is used by computers all over the world that secure the bitcoin network and process transactions in reward for freshly-minted bitcoin tokens.

Musk—whose April 1st announcement he planned to put a "literal dogecoin on the literal moon" was widely dismissed as an April Fool's Day joke before it was revealed his rocket company SpaceX planned to do just that—has been one of the biggest drivers of the dogecoin price in recent months.

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The Tesla chief executive has repeatedly posted dogecoin memes and endorsements to his preferred social network, Twitter, helping make dogecoin the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency after bitcoin, ethereum, Binance's BNB and cardano.

In 2019, Musk enthusiastically embraced the honorary title of dogecoin CEO following a Twitter poll and has repeatedly named the Shiba Inu dog-based cryptocurrency as his "fav" digital token over recent years.

Despite saying all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously in February, Musk has increasingly appeared to back dogecoin as a serious crypto contender, calling on developers to submit ideas for dogecoin upgrades and improvements via Reddit and GitHub.

"[Dogecoin] has dogs and memes, whereas the others do not," Musk recently told a Twitter user who asked why he was supporting it over the likes of bitcoin, ethereum and others.

"I haven’t and won’t sell any [dogecoin]," Musk tweeted last week in response to an investing influencer's claim Musk "has a large doge holding."