<p>Tesla CEO Elon Musk has <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392030108274159619?s=20">posted a poll on Twitter</a>, asking users whether the electronic car maker should accept dogecoin (DOGE), the meme-themed cryptocurrency.</p> <p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-104405" src="https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2021/05/Screenshot-2021-05-11-at-2.00.55-PM.png" alt="" width="1202" height="612" /></p> <p>Dogecoin, a fork of litecoin, was originally created as a joke in 2013. Over the past year, dogecoin has risen in popularity and price. Its price has <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogecoin">surged nearly 22,000% </a>in the past year and it is now <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en">the fourth-largest cryptocurrency</a> by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko.</p> <p>One dogecoin is currently priced at around $0.53 and its market capitalization is about $68 billion, only behind bitcoin, ether, and Binance coin BNB, per <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en">CoinGecko.</a></p> <p>Musk has been a fan of dogecoin over the last few years. <span data-preserver-spaces="true">In April 2019, Musk </span><a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1113009339743100929?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span data-preserver-spaces="true">tweeted</span></a><span data-preserver-spaces="true"> that DOGE "might be" his favorite cryptocurrency, adding that it's "pretty cool." </span>Last year in March, <span data-preserver-spaces="true">the "Technoking of Tesla"</span> <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1234762799492009984?s=20">said</a> that "dogs rock" and that "they have the best coin." Last weekend, he even appeared on Saturday Night Live, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-CTLgeXZT0">calling himself</a> the <em>Dogefather</em>.</p> <p>Tesla <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/99172/tesla-accept-bitcoin-btc">already accepts bitcoin</a> for its vehicles in the U.S. since March of this year. The company also has plans to expand this capability outside of the U.S. later this year.</p> <p>Tesla also holds bitcoin on its balance sheet. The company disclosed in February of this year that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. Last month, in its Q1 2021 earnings report, <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/102899/q1-earnings-show-tesla-sold-off-272m-of-its-btc-purchase">Tesla said</a> it sold off $272 million of its bitcoin holdings, in order to <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1386821144037236737">prove liquidity</a>.</p>