Dogecoin payments integrated by billionaire Elon Musk into any of his companies have been a hot topic of discussion for a number of years now. With Musk eventually taking over Twitter and rebranding it to X, expectations were that DOGE payments on the social media platform would be happening soon. While this is yet to come, there are clues that point to Musk possibly preparing to integrate DOGE payments, as community members have pointed out.
Musk Builds Out Custom Dogecoin Payment System For Tesla
Tesla, one of Musk’s companies, in 2021 had implemented Bitcoin payments for its electric vehicles before halting the feature shortly after. Since then, the company has not accepted crypto payments for its vehicles but it has implemented crypto payments for merchandize and that crypto was Dogecoin.
Following the integration of Dogecoin payments, one community member who goes by @Dogecoin_Wins took to X (formerly Twitter) to share a particularly interesting fact about how the company chose to go about this implementation. They note that instead of the automotive manufacturer going the same way as other companies who used a third-party service to implement crypto payments, Elon Musk-led Tesla had actually built out its own DOGE-only payment system.
This payment system based entirely on the blockchain is significant in the fact that it is no small feat. As the Dogecoin community member points out, Musk would’ve had to hire a number of staff including “blockchain experts, devs, security pros.” Not only this, there is also the issue of hiring “customer service agents who know how to work within the blockchain for refunds, and field more complicated questions than what CS agents are used to.”
All in all, the company would’ve had to have spent a significant amount of resources to build out this infrastructure. The community member puts the figure for this around 7 figures. Now, for a company the scale of Tesla, building out such an expensive and time-consuming infrastructure instead of using a third party could point to the fact that they intend to continue to use the product, and not just for merchandise alone. Given this, the community member concludes that “Elon’s serious about Doge.”
Why Build A DOGE-Only Payment Infrastructure?
In a follow-up post, the Dogecoin community member shared their own beliefs about why Tesla built out this infrastructure. According to them, this was not just for Tesla merchandise payments. Rather, the first reason is that the company wanted to build its own native Dogecoin payment processor.
Next, they state that the company is also trying to train its own customer service team in specific blockchain technology. Also, they are looking to learn the common problems that could come with accepting a cryptocurrency like Dogecoin for payments.
The fourth reason outlined is that the company is trying to learn and come up with solutions to problems that could arise from crypto payments. The fifth is that they are trying to do all of this “with a limited selection of low volume/low priced/low risk merchandise sales.”
@Dogecoin_Wins closes out the thread with a succinct statement:
It’s much easier to go through this learning process selling $20 coffee mugs than $80,000 cars. Knowing that, the true intent of investing all this effort is not to sell coffee mugs and belt buckles. It’s to sell cars, eventually.