DOGE, SHIB Become a Surprising Option for Payments

Businesses Accepting DOGE

Yes, businesses are accepting DOGE now. What do we do about it? Wait and watch how weird things get, I suppose. That’s the funny thing about commerce. The market alone determines the direction of an economy. It determines who wins or loses.

As much as it might not fit, your world view has no sway over how the market moves. It has no sway over society’s heading, for that matter. How weird are things going to get? Let’s not ignore the wild trajectory humanity is on; attempting to innovate our way out of a self-induced extinction. So yea, the market still sees value in DOGE, and things can probably get much weirder.

So who is accepting DOGE? Of course, Tesla is the first to come to mind. Tesla’s technoking has a fair degree of involvement with DOGE, as well as being a part of the meme behind the coin. Two other notable mentions are the Dallas Mavericks, and Newegg. For the 1900+ other companies and stores accepting DOGE as payment, you can refer to this directory.

Oh yeah, this yacht is for sale and accepting DOGE, in case anyone is interested.

Businesses Accepting SHIB

In less than two years, SHIB has done what DOGE had the benefit of 8 years to accomplish. It has become a great meme token, and is now accepted as payment by a number of businesses. If you thought things couldn’t get any weirder after DOGE, well, now we have SHIB. We now have two Shiba Inu-themed memecoins being accepted as currency.

Three notable merchants accepting SHIB are AMC Entertainment, Newegg, and Travala. Newegg is partnered with BitPay to enable SHIB and DOGE payments, while Travala is partnered with Crypto.com to enable SHIB. Coingate and NOWPayments are two other gateways that enable SHIB payments for merchants. See here for a directory of 600 companies accepting SHIB.

Good or Bad?

It’s tricky to know how to view the growing acceptance of these two leading memecoins. On the one hand, this might be a temporary behavior in the market – an opportunistic gimmick that utilizes the public’s meme awareness as a marketing tactic. On the other hand, this could be a trend that leads to memecoin payments as a mainstream service for the internet, and beyond.  All we can do is wait for the market to decide.

A major part of the crypto ethos is to promote financial independence and freedom for all. Memecoins may not be the best promoters of sound financial decision-making, but they do introduce many to the responsibility of managing their own wealth. People may lose some money once they get started, but it’s a small price to pay toward financial empowerment. As far as the crypto ethos is concerned, memecoins seem to be playing their part.

If we zoom out to see the bigger picture, memecoin acceptance is more easily understood. Memecoin payment adoption is analogous to the El Salvadoran government’s implementation of Bitcoin wallets. Their wallets are custodial (subject to seizure), and full of bugs, but it’s a failure in the positive direction toward Bitcoin adoption. Memecoins, similarly, may be a distraction in the crypto space, but they push crypto adoption, nonetheless.

What to Make of it All

Considering that DOGE and SHIB have proven staying power, they provide value by introducing new users to crypto.

I think there is much to be said for the freedom of expression and sense of community granted by DOGE and SHIB. However, I give ample weight to the concrete value in bringing new users to crypto. Crypto is growing quickly, but has much more growing to do before cannibalizing all legacy infrastructures.

I returned from a trip to El Salvador and Guatemala recently. While in Guatemala, I spent time in a small expat town that was adopting crypto surprisingly quickly.

I was observing Bitcoin’s adoption in El Salvador right before arriving, and did not expect to come across any crypto in Guatemala. Within this village, at least five merchants were accepting payments on Bitcoin’s lightning network, and I even came across a yoga class that was accepting various forms of crypto as payment, including DOGE. ATM fees were very high in the town, and DOGE was one of the means to deal with the cash scarcity.

Good and Bad

You know when you say a word too many times, it starts to not sound right? Semantic satiation is what that is.  I feel like these memecoins are the opposite.

It was strange to accept at first, but I think I’m getting used to the idea of memecoins as a payment mechanism. When considering the state of the world right now, memecoins seem a little less absurd. Merchants may be taking advantage of market hype, but some are likely being proactive in recognition of crypto in the long-term.

The market has spoken, businesses are starting to accept SHIB and DOGE for payments.