The price of Dogecoin has skyrocketed in recent hours after billionaire Elon Musk confused Twitter users by changing the app’s logo to a picture of a dog.
Dogecoin prices jumped over 30% to 7.9p when the dog graphic representing the coin popped up across the social media app, helping the market cap of the curious cryptocurrency to top $14 billion for the first time in months.
However, that gain in value pales in comparison to the 83% drop it has seen since its peak in May 2021, when it was worth 46p.
Just after the logo was changed on April 3, Musk posted an old conversation thread with account WCBChairmain from March 2022. Exactly what had just happened was suggested in the thread — that Musk should buy Twitter and change its icon to the Dogecoin dog.
It is not clear whether the logo change is a permanent change or a temporary April Fools joke.
In July last year, Elon Musk told Tesla shareholders that the carmaker, of which he is CEO, still held Dogecoin despite selling off most the Bitcoin it held. The total value of its digital assets at the time was $218 million.
Musk himself has also said that he owns Dogecoin and Bitcoin, though it is not clear how much Dogecoin he and Tesla both own.
In 2022, Musk was sued for $258 billion (£207bn) by a crypto investor in New York for inflating the price of the cryptocurrency, under the premise that it was a pyramid scheme.
On April 1, Musk asked a US judge to drop the case, saying: “There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion. (£8bn).”
