Elon Musk says he's going to put Dogecoin on 'the literal moon'

Elon Musk says he’s going to put Dogecoin on ‘the literal moon’

It might be April Fools' Day for a few more hours, but this is no joke.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday (April 1) he would put “a literal Dogecoin” (pronounced “dohj coin”) on the “literal moon.”

SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moonApril 1, 2021 See more

Although some questioned whether Musk was joking in light of it being April Fools' Day and his reputation for making off-the-cuff remarks, others, including CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz, suggested Musk could very well be telling the truth.

“I know it’s April Fool’s but I don’t for a second question that he means this,” Sheetz tweeted, to which Musk replied: “After all, SpaceX’s first payload to orbit & back was a wheel of cheese.” (SpaceX did in fact deliver a wheel of cheese to orbit in 2010, during a test flight of its Dragon cargo spaceship.)

After all, SpaceX’s first payload to orbit & back was a wheel of cheese …April 1, 2021 See more

The self-proclaimed “techno-king of Tesla,” Musk, 49, is an ardent supporter of cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin and bitcoin. In February, Tesla announced that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. One month later, Musk said Tesla would accept it as payment for its vehicles.

You can now buy a Tesla with BitcoinMarch 24, 2021 See more

SpaceX has not yet made a similar announcement.

Related: SpaceX founder Elon Musk is now the richest person in the world

Dogecoin, which originally started as a joke, was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The cryptocurrency, which uses a Shiba Inu as a mascot, is “an open source peer-to-peer digital currency, favored by Shiba Inus worldwide,” a description on Dogecoin.com states.

The cryptocurrency can be obtained in several different ways: purchased, traded on an exchange or “mined.”

This is not the first time Musk has mentioned Dogecoin’s presence on the moon. In February, Musk tweeted a meme of a Shiba Inu in a spacesuit on the moon holding a Dogecoin flag.

Literally pic.twitter.com/XBAUqiVsPHFebruary 24, 2021 See more

The price of Dogecoin skyrocketed following Musk’s tweet, as its value rose nearly 30% to $0.70 just minutes after Musk’s proclamation.

It’s unclear if Musk was serious about sending Dogecoin to the moon, but the company could potentially make that happen, given its lunar exploration plans.

In August 2020, Space.com reported that SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft could reach the lunar surface with NASA payloads as soon as 2022. And in February, NASA said it would use SpaceX to provide launch services for parts of its ongoing Gateway project, an upcoming outpost that orbits around the moon.

As Business Insider notes, the physical coins are sold as memorabilia but do not function as currency.

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Dogecoin Jumps After Musk Promises ‘Literal’ Moonshot

Cryptocurrency markets have matured in the past 12 months, with macroeconomics and blockchain-technology developments influencing prices more than ever and new Wall Street firms buying in seemingly every other day.

So it’s refreshing that dogecoin (DOGE), which was created in 2013 as a joke, continues to be a source of amusement even as it, too, shows signs of leaving its playful puppy days behind.

The digital token, symbolized by the Shiba Inu dog breed, shot up to a six-week high Thursday after a tweet by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur whose DOGE-friendly announcements earlier this year have also led to rapid price increases.

“SpaceX is going to put a literal dogecoin on the literal moon,” Musk tweeted at around 10:25 UTC (6:25 a.m. ET) today. Musk’s tweet did not explain how this seemingly impossible feat would be accomplished, as by definition digital currencies have no physical structures and therefore aren’t literal anythings. Perhaps the tweet being sent on April Fool’s may have had something to do with it.

April Fool’s Day joke or not, the tweet by the noted DOGE whisperer sent the cryptocurrency bounding from roughly $0.053 to $0.070, according to data provider CoinGecko. The 32% rise took the cryptocurrency to the level last seen on Feb. 13 and marked the end of a week-long slumber in the range of $0.050-$0.055. The token’s market capitalization is now $8.2 billion.

Dogecoin 5-minute chart Source: TradingView

Musk has previously called dogecoin “the people’s crypto” and the cryptocurrency of Mars.

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The billionaire investor also warned of too much concentration in the cryptocurrency in February, triggering a price drop. Last month, Musk supported the idea of DOGE’s listing on the U.S.-based Coinbase exchange.

While it appears as though the price of dogecoin is at the mercy of Musk’s usually humorous tweets, largely because of the publicity he’s given it, the digital token is now actually being used for purposes that are not just about speculation and yuks.

Companies such as medical-supplier CovCare, sports brand Wooter Apparel and basketball team Dallas Mavericks have adopted dogecoin as an alternative means of payment. Meanwhile, the surge in the token’s price has caused technical development on the cryptocurrency to resume, threatening to turn the lighthearted token into a much more serious breed of DOGE.

Should that happen, the world of crypto will have a little less joy in it.

One Tweet Is All It Takes – Elon Musk Sends Dogecoin’s Price Up 30% In Minutes Again

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – With summer’s heat approaching, California’s plan for avoiding a repeat of last year’s blackouts hinges on a humble savior – the battery.Giant versions of the same technology that powers smart phones and cars are being plugged into the state’s electrical grid at breakneck speed, with California set to add more battery capacity this year than all of China, according to BloombergNEF.It will be the biggest test yet of whether batteries are reliable enough to sustain a grid largely powered by renewables. Last year, when the worst heat wave in a generation taxed California’s power system and plunged millions into darkness in the first rolling blackouts since the Enron crisis, many blamed the state’s aggressive clean-energy push and its reliance on solar power. Should a heat wave strike again this summer, it will be up to batteries save the day.Their success or failure may even have implications for President Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to achieve a carbon-free electricity system by 2035 – which would require massive battery deployment and the expansion of renewable energy systems across the nation. Biden’s long-awaited infrastructure plan, unveiled this week, includes a tax credit for grid-scale batteries, according to U.S. Energy Storage Association. They’re part of his larger effort not just to shift to renewable power but to make the aging electric grid more reliable. This is going to be the preview summer for batteries in California, and we want to make sure this initial chapter is as successful as possible,’’ said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid across most of the state.By this August, the state will have 1,700 megawatts of new battery capacity -- enough to power 1.3 million homes and, in theory, avert a grid emergency on the scale of last year’s.It won’t be easy. The state’s plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 may require installing 48.8 gigawatts of energy storage, according to a report by three state agencies -- more than five times the output of all the grid-scale batteries currently operating worldwide. Other countries are also doubling down on batteries, with China on track to increase capacity to 222 gigawatts by the middle of the century from 1.4 gigawatts in 2019. Australia has a pipeline of grid-scale battery projects totaling more than 11 gigawatts, according to BNEF.But batteries do have two major limitations – time and cost. Most of the battery packs now available are designed to run for just four hours at a stretch. While that makes them a good fit for California, where electricity supplies can be strained in early summer evenings after solar power shuts down, batteries would not have prevented the multi-day outage that paralyzed Texas in February. A battery can only operate for so long before it needs to recharge.If batteries last four hours, then that’s not really going to do the job,'' said Kit Konolige, senior analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. It's still somewhat unproven, using batteries for a large portion of capacity.''Utility-scale batteries are also more expensive than “peaker” gas plants, commonly used as back-up generation when demand is high. Following last year’s blackouts, critics lambasted the state for retiring so much inexpensive, gas-fired power under its environmental regulations. Including construction and financing, batteries cost about $125 a megawatt-hour versus $109 for gas, according to BloombergNEF data.Still, California sees batteries as a way to replace those peaker plants. Not only are they a lot faster to permit and build, batteries can generate income by letting owners arbitrage power prices, charging when electricity is cheap and discharging when it’s expensive. They also offer other grid services like stabilizing voltage throughout the day.A peaker runs for a few hours in the evening hours, and then it shuts off, and that’s all it can do,’’ said Kiran Kumaraswamy, vice president of market applications at Fluence, an energy storage joint venture of Siemens and AES Corp. You’ve got to be able to provide that peak capacity but also optimize around how much money you can make at other times.’’While more battery projects are coming online as the price of lithium-ion cells drops, the rollout has not always been smooth. Sporadic fires have struck grid-scale batteries, particularly in South Korea, one of the first countries to invest heavily in energy storage. But those incidents have become rare as electric utilities and power companies gain experience with the technology. There’s been enough deployment around the world and operating history that utilities seem to be comfortable with it,’’ said energy consultant Mike Florio, a former member of the California Public Utilities Commission. It seems like the performance has been as expected, if not better.’’But will batteries prevent blackouts? So far, they’ve been credited with helping prevent outages elsewhere, most notably in Australia where Tesla and France's Neoen SA have built a 150-megawatt lithium-ion installation. That bodes well for California, where the buildout in combination with other measures should give the state enough of a cushion to prevent blackouts this summer, according to Konolige.Just in case, the state has also delayed the planned closure of some gas plants and beefed up “demand response’’ programs that cut power when needed to some customers in exchange for a lower rate or other compensation. Public officials -- including Governor Gavin Newsom, facing a likely recall election -- have a powerful incentive not to get caught short two years in a row.It would be an ugly situation to run into something similar to last summer,'' Konolige said. “To me, that’s a strong indicator that it’s unlikely to happen this year.''(Adds details on Biden’s infrastructure plan in fourth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.