Dogecoin jumps after Elon Musk replaces Twitter bird with Shiba Inu
Representation of Dogecoin cryptocurrency is seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow
By Allison Morrow, CNN
Twitter’s traditional bird icon was booted and replaced with an image of a Shiba Inu, an apparent nod to dogecoin, the joke cryptocurrency that CEO Elon Musk is being sued over.
Musk addressed the change Monday afternoon, tweeting, “as promised” above an image of a year-old conversation in which another user suggested that Musk “just buy Twitter” and “change the bird logo to a doge.”
The doge logo appeared on the site two days after Musk asked a judge to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the dogecoin, according to Reuters.
Lawyers for Musk and Tesla called the lawsuit by dogecoin investors a “fanciful work of fiction” over Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets.”
It wasn’t clear whether the logo change was permanent. Musk has been known to use Twitter to troll both his fans and his critics.
The price of dogecoin, which is typically volatile, was up more than 20% over the past 24 hours, to about 9 cents. It was trading just under 8 cents Monday morning.
Dogecoin was created December 6, 2013, by a pair of software engineers — as a joke. The name is a nod to the “doge” meme that became popular a decade ago. Its Shiba Inu mascot mimicks that meme: a dog surrounded by a bunch of Comic Sans text in broken English.
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