After Elon Musk announced that he had changed Twitter’s bird image with a Shiba Inu, which is the mascot of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, the price of the cryptocurrency increased by more than 20%.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has been a long-time admirer of Dogecoin. On Monday, he took his passion for Dogecoin to the next level by replacing the bird icon on Twitter with an image of a Shiba Inu. It seems that the Shiba Inu dog, which is the mascot of Dogecoin, was the inspiration for this alteration.
In a tweet in which he confirmed the change, Musk said, “as promised.” He also attached a chat from a year ago in which another user recommended that Musk “simply purchase Twitter” and “change the bird logo to a doge.” Both of these suggestions were made to Musk.
Two days after Musk asked a judge to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to promote Dogecoin, the adjustment was made, according to Reuters. The lawsuit accused Musk of conducting a conspiracy to fund Dogecoin. The attorneys for Musk and Tesla referred to their client’s tweets as “innocuous and often ridiculous,” and they referred to the lawsuit brought by investors in Dogecoin as a “fanciful work of fiction.”
It is not known whether the new logo will remain in place or whether it is simply another of Musk’s humorous pranks that he plays on Twitter. Musk is notorious for using Twitter as a tool to taunt both his supporters and his detractors.
The price of one Dogecoin has increased by more than twenty percent in the last twenty-four hours, hitting approximately nine cents. This is an increase from just under eight cents on Monday morning. Yet, because to the fact that Dogecoin’s price is notoriously unpredictable, it is possible for it to drop just as quickly as it rose.
Dogecoin was initially conceived of as a joke by its two software developers back in 2013. The name is a reference to the internet meme known as “doge,” which gained widespread attention ten years ago. The Shiba Inu dog that is used as the organization’s mascot is a reference to the original meme, which included a dog surrounded by Comic Sans text written in a slangy form of English.