Musk warns against bitcoin, ethereum in latest tweet

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind the meme cryptocurrency dogecoin at the expense of bitcoin and ethereum.

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind the meme cryptocurrency dogecoin, at the expense of bitcoin and ethereum.

On Friday night, the tech icon slammed bitcoin and ethereum for having “slow” processing powers and “high costs”.

Musk replied to a YouTuber on Twitter who had posted his enthusiasm for dogecoin after a new update.

“Reminder: The dogecoin update is coming soon!” dogecoin influencer Matt Wallace posted.

“It will position doge perfectly to become one of the most used currencies in the world.”

Musk couldn’t agree more.

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BTC & ETH are pursuing a multilayer transaction system, but base layer transaction rate is slow & transaction cost is high.

There is merit imo to Doge maximizing base layer transaction rate & minimizing transaction cost with exchanges acting as the de facto secondary layer.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2021

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“BTC & ETH (bitcoin and ethereum) are pursuing a multilayer transaction system, but base layer transaction rate is slow & transaction cost is high,” Musk wrote.

“There is merit imo (in my opinion) to doge maximising base layer transaction rate & minimising transaction cost with exchanges acting as the de facto secondary layer.”

A “layer” in cryptocurrency refers to a system associated with the base or main architecture of a blockchain network.

This is responsible for the rules and parameters of the blockchain, which in turn affects the transaction time, consensus algorithm etc, according to Coin Market Cap.

Musk has made another controversial tweet about bitcoin. Picture: AFP

In May, Musk called for a major update to dogecoin to speed up its block time and increase its block size.

With the update, he believed dogecoin could easily “become the currency of Earth” and beat other cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, “hands down.”

bitcoin has also recently announced an update to its system, called taproot, which will happen in November.

It’s expected to improve the coin’s privacy and efficiency and also make the jobs of bitcoin miners easier.

bitcoin is currently the leader the cryptocurrency industry, with a single coin selling for $45,000 at time of writing.

Not everyone agreed with Musk’s assessment. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Dogecoin was first created in 2013 as a joke payment system, but many, including Musk, believe it will make lots of money in the future.

Musk has previously said that anything he says about doge should not be taken seriously.

Crypto enthusiasts were quick to criticise Musk’s tweet, with many pointing out that dogecoin is still very far behind that of its competitors.

Indeed, despite Musk’s tweet, bitcoin’s price has continued to rise in the past 24 hours.

“Cryptocurrencies traded higher on Friday after a volatile week,” wrote CoinDesk.