Dogecoin gains 8% on claim Elon Musk will upgrade DOGE with Vitalik Buterin

Reports have surfaced suggesting that Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk will come together and begin working on upgrading Dogecoin (DOGE).

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As a result, the price of Dogecoin is going through the roof. Dogecoin is currently changing hands at $0.08761, up 8.46% in the last 24 hours and around 2.4% across the previous seven days.

DOGE One-day price chart. Source: Finbold

Interestingly, the price of DOGE added over $1 billion to its market cap in a little over an hour, from $10.9 billion to $12.07 billion before retracing slightly.

DOGE One-day market cap chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

The spike in the price of DOGE came after crypto podcaster and influencer David Gokhshtein told his 700,000 followers that he believes Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Twitter CEO Elon Musk will soon begin working together to improve Dogecoin in a tweet on November 25.

I feel that we’ll all see Vitalik and Elon working together to somehow upgrade $DOGE.

— David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) November 25, 2022

Buterin and DOGE shift to Proof-of-Stake

Notably, Finbold reported in September 2021 that Buterin said DOGE should consider switching to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), saying that the Ethereum code can easily be used for that transition.

The transition to Proof-of-Stake is also highlighted on the Trailmap for Dogecoin. Not only does Vitalik have the legal right to make such ideas in his capacity as an observer and founder of Ethereum, but he also does so in his capacity as a member of the Dogecoin Foundation, which he joined in 2021.

Earlier in February this year, Buterin confirmed he’s assisting in Dogecoin’s Proof-of-Stake transition. The Ethereum co-founder referenced a proposal published on Christmas last year, which outlined a strategy to execute the DOGE proposal for a ‘Community Staking’ version of PoS, which would let more individuals participate in managing the Dogecoin network.