The Tesla CEO avowedly loves “dogs and memes” and is greeting the alleged possibility of federal scrutiny of his Dogecoin tweets with a consistently droll attitude.

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Rumors of a possible investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s alleged impact on Dogecoin’s price moves have been circulating on social media over the past day — a phenomenon that one Twitterer has quipped is “peak 2021.”

I hope they do! It would be awesome

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2021

Musk’s previous show-downs with the SEC notwithstanding, the CEO appears to be nonplussed about the possibility of an all-too-real legal fallout sparked by his penchant for the meme cryptocurrency. Musk’s professed love for “dogs & memes” has spurred him to repeatedly post jocular memes about Dogecoin (DOGE), most recently one showing the Doge mascot “on the actual moon.”

Literally pic.twitter.com/XBAUqiVsPH

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 24, 2021

While the reference apes trader lingo for stratospheric price action and could therefore be construed as some form of endorsement, Musk has publicly said that for all his love of the meme cryptocurrency, he is a partisan of Bitcoin (BTC) when it comes to strategic personal and corporate investment. That hasn’t stopped the CEO’s twittering, however tongue-in-cheek, from providing some serious fuel for memecoin market volatility — Dogecoin Christmas 2020 being just one instance.

Musk’s apparently all-too-real impact on the price moves of both cryptocurrencies, given his enormous social media following, makes disentangling meme fun from celebrity shilling almost impossible. Legal advisors have previously voiced their opinion that the CEO could already be in for scrutiny from the SEC after his documented influence on Bitcoin’s price moves this year.

Both the prospect of an SEC investigation and the prospect of Doge’s metamorphosis into “a real currency,” remain, for now, parallel meme-like and humorous eventualities in the CEO’s imagination. Musk’s previous SEC battles back in 2018 may have had real ramifications for the CEO, resulting in his removal as chairman of the Tesla board and the payment of financial penalties, but he seems unlikely to give up on his Twitter kicks just yet.

Crypto industry captains are throwing their support behind a long-term project from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative to enhance Bitcoin’s security.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Digital Currency Initiative has revealed a new “Bitcoin Software and Security Effort” intended to foster research into bolstering the Bitcoin network’s defenses.

The open-source initiative has received support from a diverse group of crypto industry leaders, including Gemini’s Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, and major European digital asset manager, CoinShares.

In a blog post unveiling the project, DCI said that Bitcoin’s ascent from an “obscure cryptographic toy” to a robust network that “secures on the order of $1 [trillion] of value” was due to the millions of hours invested into building the project by open-source developers.

Coinshares announced a $500,000 donation to the project and chief executive Jean-Marie Mognetti hinted that perhaps other crypto companies should do likewise:

“As a beneficiary of the work of hundreds of developers who secure, upgrade, and maintain the open-source protocols that underlie the Bitcoin network and the applications built on top of it, we believe for-profit firms in the digital asset industry have an obligation to fund independent, neutral development efforts and research that advances the mutual interest of all ecosystem participants.”

The DCI’s four-year research and development program aims to “harden the Bitcoin network and steward the industry’s commitment to funding open-source software.”

The blog post noted that, “The objective of DCI’s new program is to contribute neutral, expert resources to improving the robustness of the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin’s security is foundational to the underlying technology’s continued evolution, as well as the broad realization of the public-good promises of digital currencies.”

The post listed several key issues that MIT is exploring, including sustaining a senior team of Bitcoin developers, exploring new programming languages, and pre-emptive investigations against possible attacks,

MIT also stressed the need for the network’s security to grow and strengthen alongside increasing adoption, noting the challenge associated with coordinating a decentralized network:

“Unlike traditional assets, Bitcoin is software running on a decentralized network. Bitcoin’s security is predicated on the accuracy and robustness of the software and hardware running it, and the actions of those participating in the network.”

In July 2020, DCI researcher James Lovejoy warned that attempted 51% attacks — attempts to capture a majority share of nodes and thus control over the Bitcoin network — may be more plausible than previously thought.

Lovejoy stressed the need for active blockchain monitoring in order to identify 51% attacks targeting proof-of-work blockchains, stating: “You need an active observer to be monitoring the network to check whether or not an attack occurs.”

“Up until now we’ve been reliant on victims to tell us about whether they’ve been attacked. As you can imagine, if this results in insolvency or a loss of user funds, victims are often not super interested in revealing when an attack has taken place,” he added.