Since the logo change, Dogecoin’s price has exploded, jumping more than 25% overnight. GIVEN RUVIC / REUTERS
While the billionaire is accused in court of having manipulated the course of the asset, Elon Musk prefers to provoke his opponents by changing the logo of the social network.
Twitter’s historic bluebird took a few days off. Monday evening, March 3, Twitter users saw the social network’s logo take on the appearance of a dog’s head. It is actually the emblem of Dogecoin, an American cryptocurrency whose merits Elon Musk has long praised.
In the process, the billionaire published a series of evocative tweets. In a montage, we can see the dog, symbol of Dogecoin, undergoing a police check. On the driver’s identity papers, a photograph of the Twitter Bluebird. The dog, however, assures us that it is « from an old photograph ». Elon Musk also posted an exchange with a subscriber who suggested to him in March 2022 to buy Twitter and change its logo, with the caption « as promised ».
Elon Musk quickly tweeted out his own joke. screenshot
Dogecoin soars
And the joke had its effect on the stock market. Dogecoin price soared, jumping more than 25% overnight from $0.07 to over $0.09 according to the CoinMarketCap database. A surge certainly impressive… But which is nothing compared to the price of Dogecoin a few years ago. The cryptocurrency has indeed lost more than 86% of its value since its historic peak at $0.65 in May 2021.
This change seems to act as a provocation on the part of Elon Musk, while the latter has been the target, since June 2022, of a complaint from investors who believe that they have been harmed by the advertising made by the Dogecoin billionaire. They accuse him of having given « legitimacy » to this currency considered a “shitcoin”, a worthless asset while having artificially increased the value of the asset by excessively promoting the asset through tweets. 258 billion dollars in damages are claimed from the richest man in the world.
The value of the asset had indeed jumped after a series of complimentary tweets from Elon Musk… Before starting to decline shortly after the broadcast of a satirical show in which Elon Musk described cryptocurrency in a sketch « scam ».
Read alsoDogecoin: Elon Musk’s joke that plunges the price
On Friday March 31, Elon Musk’s legal team filed a motion to have the complaint dismissed. According to the lawyers of the South African-born entrepreneur, the plaintiffs have not demonstrated how their client’s statements in favor of Dogecoin constitute fraud. « There’s nothing illegal about tweeting words of support or funny pictures about a legitimate cryptocurrency which continues to have a market capitalization of almost 10 billions of dollars »they said, quoted by Reuters. « This court should put an end to the fantasy of the plaintiffs and dismiss the complaint. », they added.