Dogecoin Jumps 15% After Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Accept the Meme Coin for Merchandise Musk has been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin, frequently firing off tweets that move its price.
By Amanda Breen
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The recent crypto-market surge continued into Friday morning, with Dogecoin initially spiking more than 15% after Tesla announced it would accept the meme coin for some merchandise, CNBC reports.
Earlier this morning, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company's merchandise can be bought with Dogecoin. The cryptocurrency, which got its start as a joke spinoff of Shiba Inu coin, is accepted for only certain Tesla products, among them a Cybertruck-shaped whistle that costs 300 Doge (about $59) and a commemorative belt buckle honoring Tesla's Texas Gigafactory for 835 Doge (about $164).
Musk has been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin, frequently firing off tweets that move its price, and Tesla's new acceptance of the payment comes as no surprise. In December, Musk wrote on Twitter that "Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes."
Related: Why is Elon Musk So Successful? It All Comes Down to These 5 Key Personality Traits
But buying Tesla merchandise with Dogecoin comes with some restrictions. Most notably, orders paid for with Dogecoin can't be canceled or refunded, whereas items purchased with traditional forms of payment can be returned within 30 days of receipt. It can also take up to six hours for the Dogecoin network to confirm payment, and users who mistakenly overpay are out of luck, as "the overpayment amount will not be refunded to the original form of payment," Tesla's website states.
Tesla has also accepted crypto as a form of payment in the past. Just last year, following the company's purchase of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, it announced its buyers could use Bitcoin for transactions. But Tesla walked back its Bitcoin acceptance after Musk expressed environmental concerns over its substantial energy usage. Dogecoin consumes far less energy, per TRG Datacenters.
Related: Dogecoin Is Scaring Investors. Here's Why.
Other major U.S. companies, including PayPal, AT&T and Starbucks, continue to accept Bitcoin and other forms of crypto payment.
