Elon Musk Talks Crypto, DOGE, Bitcoin, Mars’ Currency and Satoshi Nakamoto

In an interview with Lex Fridman this week, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin, Bitcoin, and the identity of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The two even touched on the question that is on everyone’s mind, what will the official currency of Mars be?

Discussing the most popular meme coin of the year, Dogecoin (DOGE) , Musk repeated what he had previously stated in his Time Magazine interview, when voted 2021 Times’ Person of The Year:

“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 and CEO and self-proclaimed 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.”

When Fridman asked Musk 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 added:

“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.”

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 2021 top crypto influencer was also asked if he is the famous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, which some people rumour him to be. “I’m not,” he replied, and said that he would say so if he were and then continued on his own beliefs of who Satoshi Nakamoto might be:

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. Obviously, I don’t know who created bitcoin for practical purposes,”

Musk continued:

“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 said in conclusion of the topic.