One tweet from Elon Musk can move the market, and on Tuesday night, the Tesla CEO and Twitter owner infamously pushed up the price of dog-themed cryptocurrencies with just a photo of a dog.
“Twitter’s new CEO is amazing,” said Musk, as a dog, wearing a Silicon Valley-style black turtleneck, sitting authoritatively in a large chair behind his desk.
Soon, the prices of the cryptocurrencies Dogecoin, Floki, and Shiba Inu, all named after dogs, soared. The gains reflect Musk’s capacity to make money with just a few happy thumbs up and focus on his Twitter persona, after he reportedly ordered 80 Twitter engineers to increase engagement during the Super Bowl.
Dogecoin—perhaps the first “memecoin,” or cryptocurrency created specifically as a joke—jumped more than 5% in about 15 minutes. The token’s market capitalization increased by almost $100 million, reaching more than $500 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
Floki, a memecoin derived from Elon Musk’s dog, also rose quickly. The price of individual tokens rose by almost 50% in about an hour, as the total market cap was halved. And Shiba Inu, another dog-themed memecoin named after Musk’s dog breed, also saw a jump in price, rising more than 1.5% in the first 15 minutes of Musk’s post.
Musk also tweeted a photo of his dog wearing glasses, a suit, and a tie. “Be better than everyone else,” he wrote, possibly referring to himself, the CEO who has cut the majority of Twitter’s workforce since taking the company private in October.
Musk said in December he would step down as CEO of Twitter after a poll of more than 100 million followers on whether he should remain as “Chief Twit,” and a majority of voters preferred him to step down.
Musk moving the market with tweets is not a new phenomenon. In 2021, he sent that Tesla made “trades possible with Doge,” and Dogecoin rose in response.
Three years earlier, Musk tweeted that he was “considering taking Tesla private.” “The funds are guaranteed,” he said. Tesla’s price responded, and investors lost $12 billion as a result, lawyers argued in a subsequent case against Musk. In early February, a jury cleared Musk of wrongdoing.
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