Elon Musk today asked his followers in a poll on microblogging site Twitter whether Tesla should accept payment in dogecoin, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, which began as a social media joke in 2013.
Musk's recent tweet comes just days after his commercial rocket company, SpaceX, said that it would accept dogecoin as payment.
"Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?" Musk asked his 53.8 million followers on the social media platform.
Musk's tweets this year have turned the once-obscure digital currency into a speculator's dream.
Dogecoin slumps
The cryptocurrency lost more than a third of its price on Sunday after the Tesla chief called it a "hustle" during his guest-host spot on the "Saturday Night Live" comedy sketch TV show.
The digital currency began to fall hours before the show began and continued to drop as he delivered his opening monologue.
This is because dogecoin is not just any financial asset, and Musk wasn't just any host. The Tesla chief is now the biggest booster of the world's fifth-most valuable cryptocurrency, having talked up the coin over the past few months, including the announcement Sunday that it will be used to pay for a new moon mission launched by his SpaceX rocket firm in 2022.
Asked earlier in February whether he thought dogecoin could be the next global currency, Elon Musk said: "I think it should be the will of the people. … What would be the most ironic outcome? That the currency that was invented as a joke in fact becomes the real currency."
With agency inputs
