The price of dogecoin soared on Tuesday after Twitter owner Elon Musk chose a dog associated with this cryptocurrency as the new logo for the social network, while the billionaire was sued for promoting this digital token.
This decision by Elon Musk to replace the historic blue bird as Twitter’s logo, whether permanent or a short-lived joke, sent dogecoin up from $0.08 to over $0.10, an increase of more than 20%.
The owner of Twitter, which has 133 million followers, has long used the platform for self-promotion and humor, sometimes in favor of dogecoin, a highly volatile cryptocurrency originally created as a joke.
Launched in 2013, it was an ironic response to two web phenomena: cryptocurrencies, which multiplied in the wake of bitcoin, and montages of a photo of a Shiba Inu dog very popular on the Internet.
Boosted by a certain buying frenzy around improbable values at the start of 2021, as well as by Elon Musk’s multiple positive messages on Twitter, dogecoin had soared to over 70 cents in May 2021. Before starting to back down shortly after the broadcast of a satirical program in which the billionaire qualified in a sketch the virtual currency “a scam”.
An investor who lost money betting on dogecoin filed a lawsuit in June 2022 seeking $258 billion from Elon Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX, but the billionaire denied the claims.
Twitter’s logo change prompted a slew of posts featuring the dog, including from Elon Musk himself, who posted a conversation with a user on the social network from last year. in which he promised to buy Twitter and make the Shiba Inu his logo.