Cardano Founder Questions if Elon Musk Holds 20% of Dogecoin Supply

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson lightheartedly asked if Tesla CEO and American businessman Elon Musk holds 20% of the Dogecoin supply.

Hoskinson teased this in a recent interview with The Thinking Crypto podcast on YouTube, in which he and host Tony Edward discussed multiple developments surrounding Cardano, including the upcoming Chang hard fork, the Midnight airdrop, memecoins, developer activity and regulatory issues with the U.S. SEC and CFTC.

In one section of the interview, Edward noted that proponents were eager to know if IOG had any potential partnerships with Elon Musk. According to the podcast host, questions on this bordered on whether there could be a partnership that allows Musk leverage the midnight sidechain for upcoming developments on SpaceX, Tesla or X.

Possibility of a Cardano and Musk Partnership 

In response, Hoskinson confirmed that there is no such potential partnership. However, the Cardano founder emphasized that the work at Cardano does overlap in some areas with what Musk does. He noted that they have extended a hand of partnership to work on several things, including addressing the bot issue on X.

Nonetheless, Hoskinson stressed that each time they reach out, there is radio silence at Musk’s end. He expressed confusion as to why the X Corps. CTO has failed to acknowledge Cardano despite its prominence, which has seen Argentina’s crypto-friendly president Javier Milei repost Cardano-related reports.

He praised Musk’s business prowess and his thirst for innovation. According to Hoskinson, he leverages X for community engagements and, as a result, would like to see the social platform succeed, suggesting that Cardano would be ready to assist in enforcing this success if it came to that.

Nonetheless, despite Cardano and Hoskinson’s influence in the crypto scene, Musk has never mentioned them. Charles Hoskinson suggested that this could be due to people in his cycle advising him against interacting with the Cardano project or Hoskinson himself.

Hoskinson Highlights Musk’s Dogecoin Enthusiasm

Hoskinson’s confusion is further bolstered by the fact that Musk is well aware of the crypto community, and should have heard of Cardano at some point. The Ethereum co-founder called attention to Musk’s acknowledgement of Dogecoin (DOGE) and his relationship with Lex Friedman, a mutual friend of theirs.

Musk, who has been a major Dogecoin proponent, is also part of the crypto community, occasionally commenting on community developments. However, his focus has been on DOGE. The previous Dogecoin upsurge, which led to the ATH of $0.73 in May 2021, was partly due to Musk’s promotion of the meme coin.

Commenting on the relentless promotion, Hoskinson asked: “Why does he have this bizarre fetish for Dogecoin?” He questioned if this enthusiasm is due to Musk owning 20% of the Dogecoin supply or if it is merely as a result of an affinity for the DOGE logo, which features late meme sensation Kabosu. 

Other individuals have also pondered on the reason behind Musk’s enthusiasm toward Dogecoin. Some Dogecoin investors slapped Musk with a $258 billion lawsuit in 2022 for losses incurred after they invested due to Musk’s promotion. The Tesla chief stressed that he never asked anyone to invest in crypto.

Notably, owning 20% of the current Dogecoin circulating supply would translate to a bag of 28.93 billion DOGE tokens, which amounts to $4.17 billion against prevailing rates. 

However, it bears mentioning that this was just an arbitrary figure from Hoskinson in a mere attempt at humor. Musk confirmed in January that he still owns a significant amount of Dogecoin, but failed to divulge a specific figure.

“I still own bunch of Dogecoin and SpaceX owns bunch of Bitcoin”

– Elon Musk in a X Space pic.twitter.com/FeRqzzgdN1

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) January 10, 2024