Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, has been adamant about supporting meme-based cryptocurrency dogecoin.
The price of dogecoin has rocketed this year, climbing almost 10,000% in the last month. This propels the memecoin to the crypto top ten- thanks to Musk’s Twitter personality. The bitcoin price, by comparison, has increased 400% in the past 12 months. Much of this increase was due to Musk’s revelation that Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion worth bitcoin at the start of the year.
Musk replied to Billy Markus, a co-creator of the tongue-in-cheek rival bitcoin, and said that dogecoin miners, who secure the network in exchange for freshly-minted coins, need to ensure their software is up-to date.
Markus wrote that’mining pools need to be updated’ in a Twitter thread. Markus has largely stopped working on the dogecoin project. Musk responded with a thumbs up emoji.
You can run a node as many times as you like. Markus wrote that in order to help the network, one must be able to run a reliable, full-featured node. He also needs to use significant bandwidth and keep it updated. Existing node operators are required to upgrade in order for 1.14.4 to be a success.
The latest version of dogecoin, was released in August. Musk previously asked network nodes to upgrade their software to lower transaction fees for dogecoin. This is apparently part his plan to ‘beat Bitcoin hands down’.
Musk stated last month that it was crucial for doge fees not to rise to make movie tickets purchases viable. Musk stated that he was working with developers of dogecoin to improve system transaction efficiency back in May.
Musk’s comments about dogs can sometimes influence the dogecoin price. However, so far, it has not moved much after Musk’s latest intervention. The dogecoin market peaked in May, ahead of Musk’s highly-anticipated appearance on U.S. comedy program Saturday Night Live. It has since lost about 70% of its value.
Musk has also caused huge price swings in smaller cryptocurrencies. Musk shared a photo of his Shiba Inu dog last week. This helped to push the price for the dogecoin-derived Shiba Inu cryptocurrency up nearly 500%. Although it has lost some of its gains, it is still much higher than the beginning of the month.
The bitcoin price is still on the rise, reaching $58,000 per bitcoin, for the first time since the May crackdown in China.