By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Dogecoin DOGE/USD soared 16% Tuesday while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock traded 2.1% lower in premarket after CEO Elon Musk said the EV-maker will accept the cryptocurrency for merchandise on a test basis.
Dogecoin was one of the very few cryptocurrencies trading in the green today. Bitcoin (BitfinexUSD) was down 3% and ethereum ETH/USD fell 5%, amid jitters ahead of a likely tightening of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy on Wednesday.
“Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes," Musk said in a tweet. Dogecoin has so far found little practical use and remained on the fridge, owing most of its popularity to its association with Musk. However, even that hasn't been enough to sustain interest in Doge, which is down 74% from May, when the Musk-inspired hype was at its peak. DogeCoin began life as a joke, its creator being merely curious as to how crypto assets could be created.
Musk, a digital currency enthusiast who distanced himself from Bitcoin due to its high energy usage, had said in May that he was working on making DogeCoin more practically usable.
As for Tesla, Musk's continued sale of Tesla shares is weighing on its price. The CEO has sold around $13 billion worth of stock since November. According to a filing Monday, he sold another 934,091 shares of the company, worth around $906.49 million.