Another Elon Musk tweet has caused a rise in the price of Dogecoin.
Elon Musk, the often controversial SpaceX founder and sporadic crypto booster, voiced his support for a set of key Dogecoin (DOGE) blockchain improvements late Sunday.
The modifications would significantly affect the cryptocurrency’s software architecture and token economics.
Following a significant infusion of capitalization early this year, the popular “joke crypto” appears to be gearing up to become a real utility coin.
It remains to be seen whether the updates Musk supports will be beneficial to coin holders if they are implemented.
Dogecoin Core developer Patrick Lodder detailed the planned modifications in a Reddit thread on Sunday:
“This proposal to all dogecoin stakeholders suggests to reduce average fees 100x for standard transactions on the dogecoin chain, split full control over all aspects of fees between miners and node operators, rely less on core development, and bring back a functional (small) free transaction space that incentivizes keeping the network healthy.”
Lower fees may entice more people to utilize Dogecoin for online cash checks, remittances, and merchant payment settlements.
It may also reduce the incentive for miners to keep the Doge blockchain up to date, validated, and safe.
In a tweet Sunday night, Elon Musk reminded Dogecoin Core developer Ross Nicoll that these modifications are “important to support.”
Important to support
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2021
In a recent podcast, Charles Hoskinson, who cofounded Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin and founded competitor blockchain Cardano, said he’s delighted Musk is stirring the pot for Dogecoin, even if it’s just for fun.
Hoskinson thinks that the attention will encourage “professional developers” to come in and “start working on doge to generate some use and usefulness for it, so at the very least it has a value floor and won’t collapse.”
Elon Musk’s tweet boosted the price of Dogecoin, which rose from $0.242 to $0.266 before settling down under major resistance around the $0.260 level at the time of writing.
Last week, with the DOGE price down for six weeks, a former Bitrefill executive joked, “Say something, Elon Musk!” due to Musk’s capacity to change markets with the push of a tweet button. That was after the cryptocurrency market, like the rest of the world, peaked in May, while Dogecoin outperformed most of its peers during the recent (and perhaps ongoing) bull run.
