Elon Musk Wishes To Bring Back Dogecoin As Payment Option For Tesla Merchandise

Musk's latest comments come after he won a lawsuit filed against him by investors in June last year that accused him of insider trading.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed his desire to reinstate Dogecoin as a payment method for merchandise on the company's website. Musk's latest comments on Dogecoin were made on the social media platform X, and are among the few of their kind since the cryptocurrency crash in the aftermath of the Federal Reserve's latest interest rate hike cycle.

The billionaire had become one of Bitcoin and Dogecoin's most ardent supporters during the pandemic when his car company revealed that it was holding Bitcoin, and his rocket company SpaceX eventually accepted payment in Dogecoin for a mission to the Moon that hasn't materialized since.

Musk's latest comments come after he won a lawsuit filed against him by investors in June last year that accused him of insider trading. Dogecoin investors alleged that Musk had pumped up Dogecoin prices through various actions, such as his X posts and television appearances, to manipulate the currency. They cited Musk's decision to sell $124 million of the cryptocurrency after he changed Twitter's logo to the currency's logo—a decision that caused Dogecoin's price to surge by 30%—as evidence of price manipulation.

However, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein dismissed the claims on Thursday, sharing his opinion that Musk's various statements could not be falsified. The investors had alleged that Musk had also traded Dogecoin through different entities - including Tesla - but the judge remained unconvinced about the actions qualifying as insider trading or market manipulation.

Now, with the lawsuit a thing of the past, Musk wants to bring back Dogecoin as a payment option for purchases on Tesla's website. He made the comments on X, but whether Tesla will choose to bring the policy back is uncertain.

While Musk's car company has trifled with Dogecoin, its interest in Bitcoin has been more serious. The firm bought a whopping $1.5 billion of Bitcoin in February 2021, which translated into an average price of $38,000 per coin. Between March 2021 and the December 2022 bottom, Bitcoin's price dropped by 64%. Since then, though, Bitcoin has been recovering as the market positions itself for the Federal Reserve's monetary policy easing and through being available for trading through different exchange traded funds.

Tesla's SEC filings, while not explicitly mentioning Bitcoin, do disclose significant amounts of net digital assets. They are listed at carrying value and fair value, and the carrying value remained constant at $182 million during its first and second quarters of 2024. However, the fair value sat at $821 million during the April quarter and dropped by 12% or $99 million in the subsequent quarter. Tesla had sold three quarters of its Bitcoin holdings in Q2 2022, and since the end of that quarter, the currency has appreciated by a strong 175%.

Dogecoin's price shot up by 20% in May after Tesla quietly updated its website to state that some products were eligible for purchase with Dogecoin. Musk also remained open to the possibility of eventually letting users buy his cars through the currency while visiting Germany in March.

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