Shiba Inu–themed cryptocurrency Dogecoin jumped over 30% Monday after Twitter’s logo, a blue bird, was swapped out for a cartoon image of a Shiba Inu on the social-media website.
The meme coin
DOGEUSD,
which famously came into being as a joke, traded as high as $0.10 on Monday, up 11% to date in 2023, but still down over 87% from its all-time high, according to CoinDesk data.
As a longtime backer of Dogecoin, Twitter’s owner and chief executive, Elon Musk, has periodically tweeted about the meme token, often contributing to brief rallies in the crypto. Musk in 2021 called Dogecoin “a hustle” when appearing on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
On Friday, Musk reportedly asked a judge to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support Dogecoin, according to a report by Reuters. Some investors accused Musk of intentionally driving up Dogecoin’s price by more than 36,000% over two years, and then letting it fall.
Musk’s lawyers reportedly called the lawsuit “fanciful work of fiction” over Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about Dogecoin in a filing with the Manhattan federal court, according to Reuters.
Musk’s SpaceX started accepting Dogecoin for some merchandise in June after Tesla
TSLA,
made a similar move in January 2022.
Musk and representatives of Twitter couldn’t be reached for comment.
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