Elon Musk breaks Twitter silence with tweets praising cryptocurrency dogecoin

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 04 February 2021 09:52 GMT
Comments
What Exactly is Elon Musk's 'Favorite' Dogecoin?
Leer en Español

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Elon Musk has broken his self-imposed Twitter silence with a host of tweets about the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

While he used his first tweet back to post about the launch of new Starlink satellites, he quickly moved on to endorse Dogecoin, which is both something of a joke and a real and functioning cryptocurrency.

It has become a particular point of interest in the wake of the GameStop affair, as the retail investors who initially showed interest in a series of specific stocks moving more widely to endorse certain metals and digital currencies.

Mr Musk had said on Tuesday said he would be "off Twitter for a while". The break appears to have lasted less than two days, and he returned with a series of posts about the cryptocurrency.

"Dogecoin is the people’s crypto," he wrote on Twitter. "No need to be a gigachad to own.

"No highs, no lows, only Doge."

He then posted a picture of himself that included the Shiba Inu dog at the centre of the doge meme, which is also the logo for the cryptocurrency itself.

The posts had received tens of thousands of retweets within minutes of publishing.

As usual, the tweets led the price of the dogecoin to surge. It was up more than 75 per cent soon after Mr Musk's tweets.

Most large cryptocurrencies were also up on Thursday, with bitcoin up just under 25 per cent and ethereum up over 30 per cent.

Dogecoin has had a volatile few days, following the GameStop affair and earlier interest from Mr Musk. The price surged as much as 800 per cent last week.

In a discussion on social app Clubhouse, in which he had also explained his love for memes and the fact he has a "happy" monkey that can play computer games with his mind, Mr Musk had expanded on his interest in Dogecoin.

“Occasionally I make jokes about Dogecoin but they are just meant to be jokes," he said.

“[But] fate loves irony...

“The most entertaining outcome is often the most likely and arguably the most entertaining outcome, and most ironic outcome would be that Dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth in the future."

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in