Niche cryptocurrency dogecoin spiked more than 30% on Monday after Twitter CEO Elon Musk replaced the blue bird on his company’s website with an image of a shiba inu, the digital coin’s logo.
On Friday, attorneys for Twitter and Musk asked a federal judge to toss out a $258 billion lawsuit from 2022 that accused the billionaire of manipulating dogecoin’s price and driving it up over 36,000%.
After the Twitter logo was altered to a shiba inu image, Musk shared a meme about the change to his 133.5 million followers on Twitter. The dog appeared only for some users of Twitter, including those on its website.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk started touting dogecoin years ago. He periodically tweets about the token, which was created as a joke in 2013, predictably causing volatility each time. According to CoinMarketCap.com, dogecoin is the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of over $13 billion.
Musk’s lawyers described his public statements about the coin as “innocuous and often silly tweets,” in a court filing Friday.
But Musk’s public endorsement of the coin goes further than social media messages. Two of Musk’s other companies, Tesla and the Boring Company, are named in the lawsuit.
In December 2021, Tesla announced it would accept dogecoin for some merchandise. At the time, Musk said on Twitter that Tesla would “see how it goes.”
Dogecoin rose more than 20% following that tweet. In January 2022, when Musk announced on Twitter that dogecoin payments were live, the cryptocurrency jumped as much as 15%.
Tesla does have digital assets on its books, including bitcoin, and still accepts dogecoin as payment for some merchandise.
“We have not sold any of our dogecoin,” Musk said on an earnings call last year. “We still have it.”
Musk has indicated that he personally holds dogecoin as well.
In a recent tweet, responding to a photograph of himself next to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Musk simply wrote: “Dogecoin.”
WATCH: Dogecoin soars on Musk tweet
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