Elon Musk made himself very popular in the crypto scene. Then he made himself unpopular. Then popular again. Right now, no one seems to have as much influence on the blockchain market as he does. That’s not an accusation at all — after all, he didn’t choose it.

His tweets about Dogecoin, in particular, have been very polarizing. Most of it was just memes, of course. I don’t think he wanted to be taken seriously at all. But now, something has changed. Elon seems to be getting serious about Dogecoin — and I don’t understand why.

A few weeks ago, he already announced on Twitter that he would sit down with Dogecoin Developers to push through improvements. Now he’s getting serious.

Dogecoin is a meme cryptocurrency. It started as a meme; it is still a meme.

Musk himself was one of the important, maybe even the decisive, reason for the extreme rise of the coin. You might think Elon had his fun with Dogecoin — but he seems really interested in developing Dogecoin further. But why?

Perhaps that Elon benefited financially from the Dogecoin bubble. Announcements like the one about wanting to develop Doge further could push the price up further — so he could profit from it again.

The second theory is that Elon intends to really make Doge a meaningful cryptocurrency without benefiting financially from it. Therefore, one could speak of a selfless commitment to the crypto scene, but it’s not that simple.

As a reminder, Dogecoin is a working cryptocurrency, but still not a very good one. It is a meme project with huge weaknesses. I have written about it in more detail, here are the main points:

• There is no real development team yet.
• Dogecoin is not very decentralized, and there is hardly any computing power securing the blockchain — a successful attack is much more likely than with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and co.
• Dogecoin does not have proper tokenomics and is highly inflationary.
• Dogecoin uses proof-of-work to secure the blockchain, which is rightly considered inefficient and wasteful. Modern blockchains are hardly based on PoW anymore or are making the switch like Ethereum.

Dogecoin is open source. It is developed by the community, not behind closed doors by a company or something like it. Therefore, theoretically, anyone can contribute to improving Dogecoin.

Musk’s call for ideas to be submitted and implemented is, therefore, anything but pointless. The only question is whether it’s worth the effort. Doge needs a lot of changes to make it a serious and meaningful project. On the other hand, there are thousands of crypto projects that are technically excellent and could be put to good use.

One Twitter user noticed this too, and confronted Musk about it:

His response is not what I had hoped for. At first, I thought Doge’s memes might be a good driver to get more people interested in the cryptocurrency market — but in my experience, the opposite has happened. Dogecoin has cast a bad light on the entire market.

• The extreme fluctuations have led to calls for stronger regulations.
• The claims of a lack of intrinsic value in coins became more.
• People were even more convinced that the crypto market is just arbitrary speculation, driven by tweets & memes.

For anyone who truly believes in blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the Dogecoin Bubble is a slap in the face. Instead of promoting Dogecoin, Elon Musk could have paid attention to “real” projects.

Cardano and Ethereum are doing a great job right now. Both platforms are aiming high, bringing significant benefits to the world, and continually optimizing.

Both are just two of thousands of projects that show real promise — but Elon would instead promote a meme project and call for people to work on it.

Final Thoughts

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see Elon Musk as having any responsibility to anyone. It’s his right to tweet what he wants — ultimately, he’s not forcing anyone to do anything.

Nevertheless, I would like to see him behave more responsibly. At the latest, after the first tweets about Dogecoin, he should have realized what kind of influence he has — he has been instrumental in driving the bubble. At some point, every bubble bursts, and individual investors could lose a bunch of money.

Now he is committed to Dogecoin and its further development.

Again, this could lead to solid gains for Doge. The question that remains is why Elon Musk is doing all this. Sorry, but there is absolutely no need for Dogecoin. The problems are significant, the competition from “real” projects even more significant.

The coin itself is just based on Litecoin, which can be considered a project with a real purpose. So, even if you like Dogecoin from a technical perspective, it would make much more sense to go with Litecoin. In my opinion, working to improve Doge is a waste of time.

So, why Dogecoin of all things, Elon?

Thank you for reading!