PARIS, France โ The price of a meme-inspired cryptocurrency surged Tuesday after Elon Musk swapped out Twitter's blue bird logo for a dog associated with the digital token, despite the mogul being sued over his previous promotion. of the coin
Musk bought Twitter in October of last year for $44 billion and has since cut the workforce, introduced paid accounts and reinstated banned users, including former President Donald Trump.
His decision to change the logo to a Shiba Inu dog, either permanent or another short-lived prank, sent the price of dogecoin up more than 25 percent, from less than $0.08 to more than $0.10.
The Twitter boss has 133 million followers and has long used the platform for self-promotion and humor, also occasionally promoting dogecoin, a highly volatile cryptocurrency initially created as a joke.
Musk has said that he is committed to cryptocurrency, with a substantial part of his fortune in bitcoin.
Musk has also introduced dogecoin as the basis for e-commerce payments, with observers wondering if the mogul will use his purchase of Twitter to build an "everything app," similar to China's WeChat, that offers a wide range of services.
The SpaceX owner's adoption of dogecoin has landed him in legal trouble in which an investor is suing him for $258 billion who claims he lost vast amounts of money due to Musk's activities, though the billionaire has rejected those claims.
In a New York court filing on Friday, Musk's legal team called the lawsuit "a fanciful work of fiction" that "should be dismissed in its entirety with prejudice."
โThere is nothing illegal about tweeting supportive words or funny images about a legitimate cryptocurrency,โ the filing added.
The Shiba Inu dog became a popular meme in 2013 when posters on forums like Reddit and 4chan began using images of the Japanese dog breed along with messages written in broken English.
The cryptocurrency was launched as a hoax later that year and remained largely worthless for years, like thousands of other coins.
However, in May 2021, its value briefly skyrocketed to a record $0.73 after Musk suggested that his auto company Tesla might start accepting it as payment.
The value plummeted rapidly, and investors accused Musk of manipulating the token's value to make a quick profit, known as "pump and dump."
The logo change prompted a slew of dog meme messages, most notably from Musk, who tweeted a conversation with a follower from last year in which he promised to buy Twitter and make the Shiba Inu his logo.
However, some users were more cynical.
"Why do I get the feeling the Doge icon was added so that when you search for 'Elon' and 'Doge' the story of his racketeering lawsuit gets buried?" comedian Jesse McLaren tweeted.