Elon Musk breaks his brief silence on Twitter to announce the ‘cryptocurrency meme’ DogeCoin – causing the asset to rise 60% amid concerns about the ability of the Tesla founder to move markets so easily
- Musk sent a flurry of tweets on Thursday announcing the crypto “joke” DogeCoin
- He followed his promise to take a break on Twitter after he fueled the GameStop frenzy
- DogeCoin skyrocketed up to 60% after his tweets, to $ 6 billion market capitalization
- The encryption was created in 2013 and based on an internet meme of a Shiba Inu
- ‘I became a meme, Destroyer of shorts,’ Musk tweeted cryptically
- Musk was previously sanctioned by the SEC for relevant Tesla tweets
- Some expressed admiration and concern for their ability to move markets
Elon Musk broke the silence on Twitter to promote the crypto ‘joke’ DogeCoin, raising the asset to 60% and raising concern about the ability of Tesla’s CEO to move markets.
Musk, who earlier this week promised to stay ‘out of Twitter for a while’, returned on Thursday with a flurry of memes promoting the obscure and often derided cryptocurrency.
DogeCoin has the same technical basis as more well-known cyrptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, but it is little used and has long been traded for less than a penny. It was created in 2013 and based on a popular internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog.
Musk’s tweets included a photo of a rocket flying over the moon with the caption ‘Doge’ and an image of the Lion King who was shown holding the dog of the Doge meme.
Elon Musk broke his silence on Twitter to promote the crypto ‘joke’ DogeCoin, sending the asset up to 60 percent
“Dogecoin is the cryptography of the people,” said another tweet. ‘There is no need to be a gigachad to own.’
“No ups, no downs, just Doge,” he added in a tweet at 12:27 pm on the West Coast.
His tweeting continued for hours, until after 2 am Pacific time. “I became a meme, a destroyer of short positions,” he said in a final tweet, apparently in reference to short sellers betting against stocks.
Musk is notoriously antagonistic towards short sellers, and his own Tesla has for years been one of the best selling short stocks on the market.
It was not clear whether someone is short selling DogeCoin or if there are markets to do so in bulk.
Regardless, Musk’s tweets sent DogeCoin soaring again, after breaking all records last week, following other enigmatic Musk tweets that seem to support cryptography.
DodgeCoin climbed up to 60% on Thursday after dropping records last week. Above, a month-long view of the currency price shows the recent extreme volatility
At one point, DogeCoin was up 60 percent on the day, with a total market capitalization of more than $ 6 billion.
By comparison, Bitcoin’s market value was almost $ 700 billion on Thursday.
Musk had previously lured sanctions to the Securities and Exchange Commission for his material tweets about Tesla, where he is CEO and a major shareholder.
He made a deal with the SEC on the complaints, which were prompted by a tweet about the company’s delisting and another sharing production projections.
Publicly traded companies are regulated in the way they provide forward-looking statements in order to ensure that investors have equal access to news that can significantly change stock prices.
Cryptocurrencies are not regulated in the same way, and Musk’s tweets about DogeCoin are unlikely to violate any law or regulation, regardless of whether he owns the cryptocurrency.
Still, his ability to move markets at will with his tweets drew admiration and concern from observers.
‘It seems that Elon Musk is always trying to prove that his opinion controls the market? It undermines credibility, ‘one person tweeted.
‘We saw this in Warren Buffett in 2011, where everyone rushed to keep up with his investments until he started doing it intentionally. At the end of the day, the market just didn’t care, ‘one person tweeted, warning that’ there is a limit ‘to Musk’s influence through Twitter.
Musk also attracted criticism last week, when his tweet about GameStop and the Reddit WallStreetBets forum helped fuel a frenetic rise in the actions of the video game retailer.
GameStop shares, which traded at around $ 4 last summer, rose to $ 483 last week, before plummeting on Monday. The shares fell another 40 percent on Thursday afternoon, to about $ 57.