Dogecoin has become the unexpected new champion of the sudden bull market for cryptocurrencies that hit the industry this week – thanks to Elon Musk.
Musk Pets “pretty cool” dog
In a series of surprising but decidedly familiar tweets, Musk, who pointed out his alleged love of Dogecoin, said the meme-based cryptocurrency was his “favorite” and described it as “pretty cool.”
Another post referred to Dogecoin as the “rule (sic)” while Musk also referred to an article on the current market by fake news agency The Onion, commenting that “Dogecoin value may vary”.
Everything that comes out on April 2nd is unknown whether Musk had a specific purpose in advocating it or whether the episode was just a delayed response to a contribution by Dogecoin itself to the April Fool’s joke.
On Monday, developers published a Twitter poll asking users to name a fictional “CEO” of the cryptocurrency who is himself a longstanding community joke.
Musk, who “battled” for the position with Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, Charlie Lee, inventor of Litecoin, and Marshall Hayner, CEO of Metal Payments, easily won the runoff and inherited the title. However, his Twitter account information indicates that he has already quit.
Three tweets, one big pump
Regardless, the impact on Dogecoin was immediate and decisive: at the time of going to press, the altcoin had made daily gains of almost 35 percent against the US dollar.
DOGE / USD is currently trading at $ 0.0033, its highest level since early November.
Elon Musk quickly caught the attention of the cryptocurrency community on Twitter, and traders extrapolated the potential support from the broader industry beyond DOGE.
Tuesday’s gains weren’t enough to get DOGE back into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, with some other well-known assets generating higher returns.
These included Bitcoin Cash, which gained 45 percent last day, and Augur, which managed 34 percent.
When is Bitcoin?
While previously posting pro-DOGE tweets, Musk’s latest post builds on the momentum that has tied him to the crypto world in recent months.
Since February in particular, attempts have been made in a community to involve the Tesla CEO in Lightning Torch, a transaction relay in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
As Bitcoinist reported, the ongoing event was publicized and involved by personalities such as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Despite all requests, Musk has so far refrained from following this example.
Last September, Musk enlisted Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer to help fight the problem of scam bots infecting Twitter, a problem that persists for many.
Palmer provided Musk with a script showing that they had had offline discussions on the matter.
“… We had a good chat about how (Dorsey) and the Twitter team should definitely automate and fix this issue,” he tweeted.
What do you think of Elon Musk’s Dogecoin propaganda? Let us know in the comments below!
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