Elon Musk likes memes. He likes dogs. And when he combines both into a single tweet and slips in a casual "Doge" reference, he makes hundreds of millions of dollars appear out of thin air.
On Wednesday afternoon, the embattled CEO of Twitter and Tesla tweeted a meme that featured the beloved cartoon character Scooby-Doo. "Doges ftw [for the win]," he wrote.
Dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency based on the Doge meme, quickly jumped in value. In just 15 minutes, the market capitalization for the memecoin rose 3%, from $9.64 billion to $9.96 billion—roughly $320 million. And the price of one Dogecoin went from about 6.9 cents to 7.1 cents. (The price had fallen back closer to 7 cents at the time of publication.)
Doges ftw pic.twitter.com/bl0trQ7BdU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2023
The latest Musk-inspired rally in Dogecoin is not the first time the CEO, with just a few keystrokes and a click, has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in value for the cryptocurrency.
He created $500 million in value for the coin when he posted a picture of his dog in February. In April, he switched Twitter's logo from a blue bird to the Doge meme and pumped the cryptocurrency up by more than 20%. And he has repeatedly referenced Dogecoin in many a public comment and interview. At a conference in May, he said that the coin is his favorite cryptocurrency because it has “the best humor” and “it has dogs.”
Dogecoin traders watch Elon Musk's Twitter and public comments with such bated breath that a group of the token's investors filed a class action lawsuit against the billionaire, alleging that the world's wealthiest human has such a sway over the market that his tweets and comments in reference to the token are akin to market manipulation.
Lawyers for Musk have called the suit, which asks for $258 billion in damages, "a fanciful work of fiction" over the CEO's "innocuous and often silly tweets."
