Billy Markus, the co-founder of meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin has asked its supporters to “stay cool” amid the cryptocurrency failing to gain any significant traction since January 2022. In a tweet, Markus warned the members of the meme-coin community against getting “crazy, toxic, attacky, spammy,” and said that could devalue the brand.
He stated that eventually, companies will stop accepting Dogecoin, the crypto will stop attracting new people and existing Dogecoin investors will leave to escape the negative environment. “It’s important to match your output with our goals,” he said. “Keep trying to be positive, kind, and fun, despite everything there is out there.”
Meanwhile, Dogecoin has been plunging under market volatility since before the beginning of 2022. According to CoinMarket cap, Dogecoin was trading for around $0.15 (Rs 11) registering a loss of up to 3.36 per cent in the last 24 hours. For the uninitiated, Dogecoin was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a faster but “fun” alternative to Bitcoin. It was started as a satire on the numerous fraud crypto coins that had sprung up at the time, and takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was viral several years ago.
Earlier this week, Musk tweeted he will happily eat McDonald’s Happy Meal if the fast-food company starts accepting Dogecoin as payment. In response, McDonald’s posted on Twitter it will accept Dogecoin if Tesla started taking “Grimace Coin”. “Grimace Coin” is not a real cryptocurrency but a made-up name based on Grimace, a character that was featured in McDonald commercials.
Further, Musk also announced that Tesla will accept Dogecoin for merchandise on a test basis.“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge and see how it goes,” he said in a tweet. Tesla sells merchandise such as apparel, belt buckle, mini models of its vehicles, quad bike ‘Cyberquad’ for kids and ‘Cyberwhistle’ modeled after its much-awaited Cybertruck.
In a recent interview with Time magazine, the Tesla and SpaceX chief said when it comes to transactions per day, Dogecoin is a way better crypto coin. “The transaction value of Bitcoin is low and the cost per transaction is high. At least at a space level, it is suitable as a store of value. But fundamentally, Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency,” adding that even though Dogecoin was created as a silly joke, it is better suited for transactions. “The total transaction flow that you do with Dogecoin is transactions per day has much higher potential than Bitcoin.”