The American billionaire Elon Musk Twitter’s owner has driven his latest eccentric maneuver replacing the social network’s famous Blue Bird logo with a drawing of a dog. But it is not just any dog; it is the Dogecoin logo, a cryptocurrency that was born as a joke in 2013, but whose value has come to exceed 40 billion dollars.
This change is added to the list of eccentricities shown by Musk since he took control of Twitter -in February when he changed the network’s algorithm so that his personal account publications were seen more often; the Tesla founder posted on his Twitter profile a screenshot of a conversation with another user of the social network last year, in which the latter invited him to buy Twitter and change the logo for the image of the dog.” As promised,” he accompanied the text of the image, thus confirming that this change was not due to a hack.
Markets Reaction to this unexpected Change
The markets’ reaction to this unusual change reflects well the volatility of the crypto world as the digital currency went from trading at seven cents around 6.00 pm this Monday to soaring more than 30%, up to 10 cents at 9.00 pm.
The momentum continued this Tuesday, and by mid-morning, the cryptocurrency was advancing more than 27%. With this advance, the cryptocurrency has seen an increase in its value by more than 35% in the last seven days.
However, the unprecedented rise in the currency’s price began hours before the logo was changed, with movements of tens of millions of dollars by large portfolios controlled by large holders. This unusual flow has raised suspicions that behind this phenomenon there is a speculative movement that goes beyond a market reaction to a logo change in the social network.
Musk’s unexpected Maneuvers
This is not the first time, Musk has shaken the markets with a move on social networks, as he caused the dogecoin to skyrocket after a tweet in early 2021, “One word: Doge”. For this kind of maneuvering, the billionaire was sued in June last year by dogecoin investors, they ask him for $258 billion for having created a pyramid scheme to skyrocket the price of the currency. Musk requested last Friday that the indictment be dismissed, according to Reuters.
Dogecoin, created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, is based on the Doge meme, which became popular in late 2013 and depicts a Shiba Inu dog that has as a sole prerogative being a fun alternative to Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency quickly gained followers, and its total value reached $48 billion in April 2021, after soaring 180%.
Although there have been recent financial events such as the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the Credit Suisse bailout, they have brought digital currencies back to investors’ consideration.
Bitcoin has been revalued by around 70% so far this year on the idea that rates will rise more slowly, and it has shown to be the best-performing asset to this point in 2023.
By Marina Meza
