Elon Musk Insist He’s Still Buying Dogecoin After 90% Price Crash

Despite losing more than 90 percent of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency’s value over the past 13 months, Elon Musk has revealed that he is still buying Dogecoin.

Dogecoin’s price saw a brief jump after the billionaire’s comments on Sunday evening, though any gains were again wiped out within a few hours.

“I will continue to support Dogecoin,” he tweeted before confirming to one of his followers that he would “keep buying it”.

The world’s richest man has been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin in recent years, claiming that it is one of only three cryptocurrencies personally invested in, along with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). As the head of Tesla, he has blocked bitcoin payments due to environmental concerns, making it possible to purchase certain products using cryptocurrency.

Mr. Musk who spoke to Time magazine last year claimed that Dogecoin was more suitable as a mainstream currency than bitcoin, as it has no fixed supply.

“Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions,” he said. “It’s a little inflationary… but it’s cool because it encourages people to spend instead of hoarding it as a store of value.”

Mr. Musk, who made his first fortune as a co-founder of online payments giant PayPal, had previously announced himself as the CEO of Dogecoin. The record-breaking price rally in 2020 and 2021 was partly attributed to comments made by Mr. Musk, particularly in the build-up to his appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live in May 2021, when he was expected to hype up the cryptocurrency to millions of viewers.

After close to $0.70 in the build-up to the show, it subsequently crashed spectacularly and is currently trading below $0.06.

Much of Mr. Musk’s past projections for Dogecoin and the cryptocurrency space have generally been long-term, once quipping that “the Mars economy will run on crypto”.

In a 2021 Q&A session on the Clubhouse app, he said: “Luck loves irony… the most amusing outcome is often the most likely and arguably the most amusing outcome, and the most ironic outcome would be that Dogecoin would become the currency of the earth in the future.”

Following his latest remarks, Dogecoin co-founder Billy Marcus thanked the tech billionaire for his support.

“You’ve always been earnest about supporting the coin for what I consider the right reasons – you find it amusing, appreciate the satire and irony, and you think it has potential as a currency – and your companies accept it for merch, giving it more utility,” he tweeted.