Dogecoin Spikes More than 21% as Elon Musk says Tesla to Accept it as Payment for Merch

The meme-inspired cryptocurrency surged 23% on Tuesday after Elon Musk said Tesla would accept Dogecoin as payment for some of its products. Finally, it traded 18.9% higher. "Tesla will make a few items that the governor can buy, and we'll see how it goes," the EV maker CEO tweeted.

Elon Musk has a lot to say about dogecoin. dogecoin is what he calls his favorite digital coin, he mentioned on the NBC talk Saturday Night Live.

Dogecoin was originally started in 2013 as a joke by creators Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The brand is based on the Japanese Shiba Inu dog that inspired the original dog meme. Musk's 4,444 tweets and rising interest from hobbyists sparked a speculative frenzy for crypto earlier this year, which led to a rally.

Dogecoin hit an all-time high of over 74 cents in May from 1 cent at the beginning of the year. Since then, it has plummeted to just 20 cents per coin. Tokens are down more than 70% from all-time highs.

Some cryptocurrency investors say Dogecoin is a “meme stock” phenomenon like GameStop and AMC and should not be taken lightly.

"I don't know... “Dogecoin is good for the cryptocurrency market,” Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of cryptocurrency company Ripple, told CNBC last month.

Dogecoin recently found a competitor in the form of a Shiba Inu, a so-called meme token that calls itself  a “Dogecoin killer.” Shiba Inu is currently the 13th largest coin by market value and at some point briefly outperforms Dogecoin.