Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who earlier this month declared a "financial emergency" in the United States, has returned to the world of cryptocurrency at a time when Bitcoin's price surge may have just begun.
The price of Bitcoin has surpassed $90,000 per Bitcoin, up 20% in a week, with traders eyeing $100,000 after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, with Musk’s “favorite” cryptocurrency Dogecoin leading the price rally that has caused the entire market to surpass $3 trillion for the first time since 2021.
Now, after leaks revealed BlackRock plans to double down on Bitcoin, Elon Musk has heaped praise on the meme-based Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency he once vowed to send “to the moon.”
Musk posted on X in response to Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus: "I think Dogecoin's smooth inflation, that is, reducing the inflation percentage, is a feature, not a flaw." Billy Markus once suggested that if users do not like Dogecoin's inflation, they can propose to cancel its inflation function.
“You can make changes there, issue pull requests, convince the community and miners to use the new version,” Markus wrote, adding that inflation is “ideal for a stable, predictable inflation rate intended as a currency, with a decreasing percentage” and is “much lower than the US dollar.”
This week, the price of Dogecoin has returned to its highest level since the Musk-led cryptocurrency boom in 2021. Musk's public comments on Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and Dogecoin in 2021 inflated the lockdown-era cryptocurrency bubble, and when the bubble burst, Musk was in legal trouble - earlier this year, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that claimed Musk and Tesla drove the price of Dogecoin to a $258 billion "pyramid scheme."
Tesla and Musk’s rocket company SpaceX both accept Dogecoin for some purchases, and Musk has said he personally owns some of the meme-based cryptocurrency.
Musk – who was appointed by US President-elect Donald Trump to head his new administration’s Department of Efficiency, nicknamed “Doge” after the meme behind Dogecoin – recently warned that inflation could mean the dollar is headed for “destruction”.
This week, the price of Bitcoin surged to a record high, and the prices of Dogecoin and other small cryptocurrencies also saw sharp increases.
Forbes Digital Assets
Musk strongly supported Trump's campaign in the weeks before the US election and is one of a group of advisers around Trump who strongly support Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Trump’s victory has driven bitcoin prices higher over the past week as traders bet his administration will mean an easing of cryptocurrency regulations and changes in leadership at regulators unhappy with the crypto market.
Trump has also floated plans to build a U.S. strategic reserve of Bitcoin — predicting that Bitcoin prices could eventually surpass gold — and the possibility of using Bitcoin to pay down the U.S.’ $35 trillion debt.
