Was it a delayed April Fools’ Day prank, a trolling response to Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit, or an indication Twitter would combine the OG joke cryptocurrency? These have been among the many numerous questions ricocheting across the Twitter-sphere after the social media platform’s blue chook icon was changed by Dogecoin’s shiba inu brand on April 3.
The confusion was hardly dispelled by Elon Musk’s clarification for the change, a tweet that merely learn, “As promised,” accompanied with a screenshot of his 2022 dialog with a person who steered flipping the chook in favor of Doge. Dogecoin chimed in by tweeting: “Very forex. Wow. A lot Coin. How Cash. So Crypto.”
No matter the considering behind the transfer (or lack thereof), the worth of Dogecoin spiked dramatically from $0.077 on April 3 to $0.090 on the time of writing. It’s a 16 p.c enhance that represents the coin’s highest worth in practically six months.
Regardless of these features, Dogecoin continues to be buying and selling 86 p.c under its 2021 peak. Musk has been a tongue-in-cheek booster of Dogecoin for a number of years and it featured prominently within the Saturday Night time Dwell he hosted in 2021. Since first tweeting about Dogecoin in April 2019, the coin’s worth has elevated 2,547 p.c.
Apart from the market volatility sparked by the elevated presence of the shiba inu on the social media, it renewed discussions that Dogecoin was on monitor to discover a place in Twitter’s future. That is extraordinarily unlikely. Dogecoin, which is a clone of Bitcoin and was launched as a joke in 2013, is a proof-of-work coin (learn: actually dangerous for the setting) with sluggish transaction speeds and in the end little utility for Twitter.
One other concept is that Musk is trolling the plaintiffs who’ve introduced a $258-billion racketeering lawsuit in opposition to him. The lawsuit introduced by Dogecoin traders accuses Musk of operating a pyramid scheme and utilizing his place of affect to drive up the worth of Dogecoin after which letting it crash. On March 31, days earlier than Twitter’s picture change, Musk requested a U.S. decide to throw out the case, labeling it a “fanciful work of fiction.”
Musk appeared to comply with by means of on one other one in all his pet jokes on April 5 when the ‘W’ on the signal of Twitter’s headquarters was lined, a reference to a ballot Musk took in April 2022 that requested if he ought to “delete the ‘w’ in Twitter?”
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