A year ago, Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, launched a big challenge to McDonald's.
At the time, the influence of the whimsical and charismatic entrepreneur was on the rise. He had nearly 72 million followers on the social network Twitter.
The challenge was to prompt the fast-food chain to accept the dogecoin cryptocurrency, of which Musk is an evangelist, as a means of payment in its restaurants.
In return Musk offered the burger giant a huge advertisement: The Techno King, as he's known at Tesla, proposed to eat a McDonald's burger live on television.
"I will eat a happy meal on tv if @McDonalds accepts Dogecoin," Must wrote on Twitter on Jan.25, 2022.
McDonald's did not respond to the billionaire's proposal.
Musk Renews His Offer
A year later Musk has just renewed his offer. It all started with a tweet from the Big Mac manufacturer, its first in a long time.
"What did i miss," the official account of McDonald's posted on Twitter on Jan. 26.
"Oh hi lol," Musk responded.
It was then that the user @cb_doge, who presents himself as a graphics designer at Dogecoin Foundation, asked the billionaire if his offer made to McDonald's a year ago was still valid.
"Is this offer still open?" the user asked.
Musk did not hesitate to say yes, it was still on the table.
"💯," the billionaire said.
In a sign of the excitement surrounding this topic, Musk's response has already been shared more than 625,000 times at last check.
Will McDonald's Accept Dogecoin?
McDonald's has yet to respond.
But Twitter users were already dreaming of an alliance between the most famous meme coin and the king of the burger.
"McDonalds #Dogecoin Acceptance Coming!" commented one user.
"@McDonalds are sleeping on a gold mine here. The thousands of people who would just purchase a burger with @dogecoin for the sake of it," said another user.
"@McDonalds what are you waiting for? @elonmusk the $Doge Father & the #Doge Fam are ready 👀," added another user.
While McDonald's didn't react to Musk's offer in 2022, the situation has changed so p-perhaps a new pressure campaign from dogecoin fans can bear fruit.
Indeed, Musk, who had 72 million followers in January 2022, now has 127.5 million. He took over Twitter, which boosted his already global influence.
Images of Musk eating a McDonald's burger would be a phenomenal commercial that would certainly go viral, creating long-lasting buzz around the chain. In addition, dogecoin is one of the favorite cryptocurrencies of Gen Z. By accepting it as a means of payment, the chain could expand its customer base.
More than 2,090 merchants accepted dogecoin as payments as of January 2021, according to Cryptwerk.
The best known is Tesla, which has been accepting dogecoin as payment for merchandise from the electric vehicle company since Jan. 14, 2022.
Dogecoin: The First of the Meme Coins
Dogecoin is considered the first of the so-called meme coins, which are inspired by a meme or have some humorous characteristic.
It was created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies.
It has a few obvious benefits for small businesses compared with bitcoin.
Bitcoin is more of a store of value. Dogecoin is better geared for day-to-day transactions due to its unlimited supply, and it carries lower transaction fees.
But it remains an extremely speculative play: Its price often jumps in response to tweets from Musk or billionaire Mark Cuban.
It's also worth pointing out that dogecoin is built using the same energy-intensive proof-of-work mining model that's caused problems for bitcoin. So if dogecoin grows, so will its carbon footprint.
