The price of Dogecoin (DOGE), a cryptocurrency created as a meme using the Shiba Inu dog breed as its mascot, has surged over 60% after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk started tweeting about the cryptocurrency.
Through a series of tweets, Elon Musk started seemingly trying to pump the cryptocurrency’s price, starting with a rocket near the moon and commenting “Doge” near it, and following up with a photoshopped scene from the movie ‘The Lion King’ showing Elon Musk picking up DOGE’s mascot.
The meme cryptocurrency was seeing its price drop from a new all-time high of about $0.088 that was hit thanks to a retail investor-fueled surge meant to help the price of DOGE hit $1 per coin, taking advantage of the momentum created through the WallStreetsBets’ move to create a short squeeze on GameStop shares.
Dogecoin’s price then dropped to about $0.0315 before Musk started tweeting about it, and the cryptocurrency is now trading at $0.051.
Elon Musk’s comments and apparent acknowledgment of the DOGE price pump came shortly after cryptocurrency derivatives trading platforms BitMEX launched Dogecoin perpetual swap contracts, allowing investors to speculate on the cryptocurrency’s price through long or short positions.
BitMEX allows traders to leverage their positions up to 20x and bases the contracts on the underlying bitcoin equivalent of the DOGE/USDT trading pairs on other cryptocurrency trading platforms. Musk, as the pump is ongoing, tweeted out he is the “destroyer of shorts,” seemingly pointing out a short squeeze was created after his tweets.
Several users are speculating the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has been hacked, as the DOGE tweets are seen as “irresponsible” for creating an artificial price surge that could see some investors hold the cryptocurrency at inflated prices after buying because of fear of missing out (FOMO).
Moreover, the tweets are being published two days after Musk tweeted he was going to be “off Twitter for a while.” The tweets are also coming from the microblogging platform’s web app, which Elon seemingly rarely – if ever – uses.
Several prominent figures in the cryptocurrency space have weighed in on the DOGE price rise, cautioning investors there are risks involved. Binance’s Changpeng Zhao pointed out that while the coin is “cool” and “fun,” its core development team has abandoned it. Moreover, one address holds 27% of all circulating DOGE, while the top 20 addresses hold over 50% of its supply.
Featured image via Pixabay.
