This article was originally published on October 24, 2021, at 4:47 pm. It was one of the most read articles on Benzinga.com this year.
Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO and Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) proponent Elon Musk said that “lots of” the people building cars at Tesla and rockets at his space company SpaceX own DOGE.
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What Happened: Musk was responding to a tweet from Glauber Contessoto — the “dogecoin millionaire” — citing a recent Benzinga article about one-third of United States crypto holders owning Dogecoin. Musk replied that he became a doge supporter after finding that many of his employees owned the meme cryptocurrency.
Musk explicitly said that “lots of people I talked to on the production lines at Tesla or building rockets at SpaceX own Doge.” He highlighted that those people “aren’t financial experts or Silicon Valley technologists” and that he thinks that this favors the coin. He reasons that support by his employees for Dogecoin makes him feel like it is “the people’s crypto,” and that's why he decided to support the digital currency.
Related Link: Elon Musk Responds To Dogecoin 'Squid Game' Meme, Backs Call For Nodes To Upgrade
In a separate Twitter thread, Musk also revealed that he does not own a single Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) or the coin dedicated to his dog Floki (CRYPTO: FLOKI). Instead, he said that he only owns Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum(CRYPTO: ETH) and Dogecoin.
This exchange follows a recent exclusive interview with Benzinga, during which Contessoto revealed that he has not sold a single Dogecoin and discussed the other cryptocurrency bets he made after making his fortune with DOGE.
Price Action: According to CoinMarketCap, as of press time Dogecoin is trading at $0.2619 after seeing its price increase by 5.75% over the last 24 hours.