Eco-friendly cryptos gain on Tesla’s BTC rejection, but Musk keeps pushing Dogecoin

Cardano and Hedera Hashgraph are soaring as traders try to find the next eco-friendly cryptocurrency that might be spruiked by Elon Musk — and Dogecoin is also gaining after a possible joke by the Tesla Motors chief executive.

At 11am AEST, Cardano was trading at US$1.90, up 16 per cent from yesterday, and had hit an all-time high of US$1.97 earlier this morning. Hedera Hashgraph, the No. 57 crypto, was up 32.6 per cent to US34.7c.

Musk tanked crypto markets yesterday after tweeting that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin for payments, because of what he described as the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions”. Tesla had only begun accepting BTC in March.

Both Cardano and Hedera are “proof of stake” cryptocurrencies, meaning they don’t rely on mining and are far more energy-efficient than Bitcoin. “Proof of stake” is generally considered the next generation of crypto technology and Ethereum‘s developers hope to transition the network to that status this year.

Cardano’s founder, who claims that his network consumes less than 0.01 per cent of Bitcoin’s 115 Terrawatt hours, tried to entice Musk into learning more about the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency.

@elonmusk are we finally going to have the Cardano conversation? Come to my farm in Longmont with Kimbal. Got sweet tea and minidonkeys

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 13, 2021

But Musk seemed more interested in Dogecoin, the meme currency he’s been pumping all year.

Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

It wasn’t clear if Musk was trolling — Dogecoin does have developers who update the token, but just as a side project. They released a new version of the Dogecoin Core wallet on March 1, but before that the last release was in November 2019. Also, like Bitcoin, Dogecoin is a “proof of work” blockchain, relying on miners who expend electricity to secure the network.

Bitcoin’s proof of work is inefficient but Doge’s proof of work can work.

Much sense. Wow logic

— Muneeb (@muneeb) May 13, 2021

Name these developers. The world is very curious.

…Or is this another “Developers Secured” tweet?

— Preston Pysh (@PrestonPysh) May 14, 2021

…electricity isn’t used for transaction processing. It’s used to secure the network. Doge is PoW meaning it faces the same basic dynamics as Bitcoin. It uses less electricity now because it’s less secure.

— Ari Paul ⛓️ (@AriDavidPaul) May 13, 2021

In any case, Dogecoin was up 7.5 per cent to US47.7c at lunchtime.

Overall the crypto market was mixed, with 18 top 100 coins up in the past 24 hours and the rest down. But only four tokens had suffered double-digit losses.