Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame has hinted that he could develop a cryptocurrency, though the possibility remains uncertain.

Musk Proposes Marscoin

On Feb. 14, Musk expressed a desire to buy large amounts of Dogecoin to drive up its value. Alternately, he said, he could pay Dogecoin investors to void their accounts.

A day later, Mansour Shahrokh of Knight Chadwick Limited suggested that Musk should create his own cryptocurrency in order to accomplish the task of buying up the Dogecoin supply. “You wouldn’t need to pay [U.S. dollars] to make those major dogecoin holders richer than they already are,” Shahrokh observed.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao suggested calling the cryptocurrency Marscoin. Musk replied: “There will definitely be a Marscoin.”

Those comments are presumably in reference to earlier discussions on Twitter, which suggested that Musk should create a crypto for SpaceX Mars missions scheduled to begin in 2024.

Of course, the idea proposed today has nothing to do with Mars. It is related to a possible purchase of Dogecoin, which implies that Musk’s confirmation is less than serious.

Is It Feasible?

Though the strategy described above appears to be in jest, the idea is not entirely unthinkable.

Tesla recently purchased $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, which suggests that Musk or his enterprises could afford a significant part of Dogecoin’s $6.5 billion market cap. Likewise, buying and burning those coins in a void account would drive up the value of Dogecoin.

However, creating a cryptocurrency would likely cause regulatory trouble for Musk. Even if Musk did not carry out an ICO and created a coin that derives its value from his own fame, doing so would likely attract unwanted attention from regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ultimately, it seems unlikely that Musk will undertake the idea in practice—though it is also unlikely that this is the end of his cryptocurrency endeavors.

At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.