Tesla CEO Elon Musk Praises Dogecoin, Criticizes Bitcoin, Guesses Identity of Satoshi Nakamoto

Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk says dogecoin is “fundamentally better than anything else” he has seen while he criticizes bitcoin. He also discussed the identity of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the official currency of Mars.

Elon Musk Discusses Crypto, Dogecoin, Bitcoin, Mars’ Currency, and Who Satoshi Nakamoto Is

Elon Musk shared his thoughts on cryptocurrency, dogecoin, bitcoin, and the identity of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, in an interview with Lex Fridman, published Tuesday.

Musk, who has long been a supporter of the meme cryptocurrency dogecoin (DOGE), revealed:

Part of the reason why I think there is some merit to dogecoin, even though it was obviously created as a joke, is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than bitcoin.

“The cost of doing a transaction, the dogecoin fees are very low,” the Tesla executive added.

In contrast, he said: “Right now, if you want to do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high, so you could not use it effectively for most things, and nor could it even scale to a high volume.” Following the publication of this interview, many people took to Twitter to remind Musk of the Lightning network.

This is not the first time Musk said that dogecoin is better than bitcoin for transactions. During his “Person of the Year” interview with Time Magazine, he noted that bitcoin is better as a store of value while dogecoin is better suited for payments. He also recently announced that his electric car company, Tesla, will start accepting DOGE.

The Tesla CEO, who is sometimes known in the crypto community as the Dogefather, further opined:

I’m not saying that it’s the ideal system for a currency but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I’ve seen, just by accident.

Musk was also asked if he is still considering making dogecoin the official currency of Mars. He replied: “I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can’t synchronize due to the speed of light, or not easily.”

He explained: “Mars is, at closest approach, it’s four light minutes away roughly, and then at furthest approach, it’s roughly 20 light-minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can’t really have something synchronizing if you’ve got a 20-minute speed of light issue if it’s got a one-minute blockchain. It’s not going to synchronize properly.” The Tesla boss continued:

I don’t know if Mars would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably, seems likely. But it would be kind of localized thing on Mars.

The Spacex boss was asked whether he is Satoshi Nakamoto as some people believe him to be. “I’m not,” he quickly replied. “Would you tell us if you were?” he was asked. “Yes,” he affirmed.

He proceeded to share his theory of who Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, might be.

“You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas,” he began. While emphasizing, “Obviously I don’t know who created bitcoin for practical purposes,” he detailed:

The evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that, and it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas.

“He claims not to be Nakamoto but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else,” Musk concluded.