Elon Musk On Why Dogecoin Is Fundamentally Better Than Anything Else He Has Ever Seen

The person who has arguably the strongest pull on the Dogecoin leash, Tesla founder Elon Musk, has admitted that the original meme coin is fundamentally better than anything else he has ever come across.

Musk Explains Why Dogecoin Is Fundamentally Better

Elon Musk praised Dogecoin for the umpteenth time during his latest appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. The South African-born tech magnate compared DOGE to Bitcoin, obviously favoring the former.

Musk argued that Dogecoin has a much higher transaction volume functionality compared to the most valuable cryptocurrency as well as significantly lower transaction costs. “Right now, if you want to do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high so you could not use it effectively for most things, and nor could it even scale to high volume,” he said.

In other words, Dogecoin is a viable payment option — one that can routinely be used to purchase a cup of coffee — unlike Bitcoin. According to the Tesla chief, the small Bitcoin block size and a long synchronization time made sense back in 2008 owing to the poor internet infrastructure at the time. But in 2021, Bitcoin’s transaction speed is “comically slow”.

Musk then noted that Dogecoin’s inflationary supply encourages more people to use the coin. If investors expect the price of a crypto asset to appreciate in time due to a scarce supply, the Tesla chief says they will be reluctant to spend it. This is why he believes Dogecoin is “fundamentally better than anything else I’ve seen, just by accident”.

Earlier this month as Musk was named by Time Magazine as their 2021 person of the year, he reiterated that Dogecoin is a better substitute for transactional currency than Bitcoin, which most people would rather HODL as a store of value.

Is Dogecoin Really Much Better Suited For Tesla Than Bitcoin?

DOGE has come a long way since its modest beginnings as a joke crypto project based on a viral internet meme of a Shiba Inu doge. Notable companies and people have embraced Dogecoin this year but it is Elon Musk that has basically helped the coin take an entirely new life of its own. 

Earlier this year, Tesla invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin and even went further to accept it for payment on its electric cars. Just three months later, though, Tesla infamously u-turned on its decision, citing Bitcoin’s electricity usage as a cause for concern. Experts in the crypto space were quick to highlight the fact that Dogecoin employs the same proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism as BTC, litecoin, and other cryptos. This means that the mining of the doggy-themed cryptocurrency consumes as much energy as that of bitcoin.

Yet, Musk announced this month that Tesla would begin accepting DOGE as payment for its merchandise on an experimental basis. It’s worth noting that the development team behind Dogecoin recently laid out its first-ever roadmap detailing an array of new exciting projects, including a possible jump to the energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS).

Dogecoin enthusiasts are hoping the Dogefather will not reverse course on their favorite coin this time around.

On Wednesday, DOGE was changing hands at around $0.1691, down more than 7% over the last 24 hours amid crypto market sell-off.