Elon Musk took to Twitter on Tuesday to try to convince fast-food chain McDonald’s to accept Dogecoin as a form of payment.
The world’s richest man told the world’s most recognizable fast-food chain he would “eat a happy meal on tv” if the restaurant allowed their customers to use the dog-themed cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
I will eat a happy meal on tv if @McDonalds accepts Dogecoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2022
Musk’s tweet is the latest in a meme saga surrounding Bitcoin’s drop in value. Crypto traders became the butt of widespread social media jokes speculating that they would have to work at McDonald’s due to Bitcoin’s rapid descent in the last week, with even Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele making light of the situation by tweeting an edited photo of himself as a McDonald’s cashier.
El Salvador made the cryptocurrency legal tender for their country in 2021.
#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/YVDlBoA2Cq
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) January 22, 2022
The fast-food chain itself acknowledged the joke, with its official account tweeting “How are you doing, people who run crypto Twitter accounts,” on Monday.
Dogecoin’s founder poked fun at the company by replying with “I want a fry,” to which the brand shot back with an edited illustration of a Shibu Inu with a McDonald’s fry in its mouth.
— McDonald's (@McDonalds) January 19, 2022
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a “joke,” making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time.
They wanted to create a peer-to-peer digital currency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. In addition, they wanted to distance it from the controversial history of other coins. Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6, 2013; within the first 30 days, there were over a million visitors to Dogecoin.com.
It quickly developed its own online community, reaching a market capitalization of over $85 billion on May 5, 2021.
Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of the Shiba Inu dog from the “Doge” meme as its logo and namesake.
Dogecoin.com promotes the currency as the “fun and friendly internet currency,” referencing its origins as a “joke.”
Elon Musk boosts popularity of Dogecoin
Elon Musk frequently mentions or talks about Dogecoin on his Twitter account, boosting its popularity significantly in recent years.
Many developers have created new, Shiba Inu-themed coins, hoping to ride the wave of Musk’s promotion of Doge.
Thus developers were prepared for the event of a new pump from Musk, having created the “Shiba Floki” token in the time between his first tweet this summer and his new puppy’s actual arrival last year.
Their plan worked: once Musk had published the picture of Floki, in September 2021, Shiba Floki jumped a staggering 1000 percent in value. Other Floki-themed coins like “Floki coin,” “Floki Inu” and “Floki Shiba” experienced rises of 250 percent, 60 percent, and 25 percent.
Musk’s first Dogecoin-related tweet occurred on the 20th of December 2020. Musk tweeted “One Word: Doge.” Shortly after, the value of Dogecoin rose by 20 percent.
This was followed by a series of Dogecoin-related tweets by Musk in early February 2021 captioned “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge.” Following these tweets, the value of Dogecoin rose by roughly 40 percent.
The price of the coin rose by more than 100 percent on April 15, 2021 after Musk tweeted an image of Joan Miró’s “Dog Barking at the Moon” painting captioned “Doge Barking at the Moon.”
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