Elon Musk promised to fund Dogecoin, now the foundation accounts are overdue
While Elon Musk’s infatuation with satirical dog-themed crypto Dogecoin is well documented, the truth around his role in the project’s funding is less cut and dried.
On the one hand, American author Water Issacson’s Elon Musk biography discusses at length the controversial billionaire’s financial support for the project, while in a 2021 Decrypt article, Dogecoin Foundation director Ross Nicoll claims that it turned down his offer despite working closely with the Tesla founder since 2019.
Whatever the truth, Musk’s admiration for the project is clear for all to see. Indeed, he even spent much of his appearance on Saturday Night Live promoting it.
Not only that, Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office, was also listed on the advisory board of the Dogecoin Foundation (though Musk would later take to Twitter — now X — to deny that Birchall or himself had any association with it).
Read more: Insider trading lawsuit: Here’s how much Elon Musk pumped DOGE
However, despite Musk’s apparent support (financial or otherwise), Dogecoin’s development efforts have been slow. The core repository linked from the Dogecoin Foundation website shows that the last commit was almost three years ago, on May 18, 2021, and that was a template for people to submit bugs.
Most of the work for the next major release (1.21), announced in 2021, appears to have been completed but hasn’t been deployed. Other products have been updated more recently, including the ‘GigaWallet,’ which saw a commit today, the first since November.
Jens Weichers, a director for the Dogecoin Foundation entities emphasized to Protos that there is no direct relationship between the Dogecoin Foundation and the core client implementation: “Dogecoin Core’s next major release is supposed to be 1.21. Dogecoin Core is a client and at this time the reference implementation. Several developers/maintainers of Core are members of the Foundation (and the Foundation has provided some funding to Core contributors and received some funding from the developer tipjar) but Core is not a project of the Foundation.”
The Dogecoin Foundation is suffering administrative problems with two of its entities, MADEUPNUMBERS LTD and MUCH WOW LTD, both listed as ‘Accounts overdue’ on Companies House.
MUCH WOW LTD is also the sole member of Dogecoin Foundation Australia, based on corporate records reviewed by Protos.
Despite all the attention recently paid to Musk and Dogecoin, the project itself appears to be slow to make substantial changes.
Protos has reached out to a director of MUCH WOW LTD and MADEUPNUMBERS LTD to obtain clarification on the current status of the Dogecoin Foundation and will update this piece if we hear back.
Update: January 9th, 2024 22:06 UTC: Jens Wiechers, a director for the Dogecoin Foundation entities, responded to Protos, notifying us that the Dogecoin Foundation: “had to switch accounting firms and then the US office of the second one was bought out leading to delays. I hope that we’ll be ready to submit UK and USA accounts by the end of this month.”
Update: January 10, 2024 15:08 UTC: Wiechers further clarified the relationship between the Dogecoin Foundation and the core client.
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