It’s 2021 again. Bitcoin may be higher today, but the big winner is the original meme coin, Dogecoin. The reason appears to be Elon Musk.
Over the past 24 hours, Dogecoin’s price has risen nearly 12%, according to CoinGecko data. Its price now stands at $0.1264.
Over the past seven days, DOGE has jumped nearly 18%, making it the best-performing cryptocurrency among the 40 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Billionaire businessman Musk tweeted on Tuesday that “DOGE will fix it” in response to a Los Angeles Times article reporting that California officials have blocked his company SpaceX from launching more rockets from the state.
Musk was referring to the so-called Government Efficiency Administration, an idea floated by former President Donald Trump to form a government efficiency commission that Musk would lead if the Republican candidate wins next month’s election.
But investors may have interpreted Musk’s tweet as a Dogecoin pump, given his history with the coin, and the billionaire retweeted and posted memes before the current jump in prices. It is also not the first time he has made a clear connection between the name of the proposed agency and the cryptocurrency DOGE and the meme.
Dogecoin is the ninth largest digital asset, with a market capitalization of $18.5 billion. Originally created as a joke by developers wanting to poke fun at the seriousness of Bitcoin, it became a somewhat more serious cryptocurrency during the 2020-2021 cryptocurrency price surge.
Part of the reason for this is that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been frequently posting memes about the currency on Twitter (now X), which has led to a growing number of followers and a rise in prices.
Meme coins are highly volatile tokens typically based on internet memes, jokes, or global events. Most coins are ephemeral and only have one moment in the spotlight before they lose most of their intrinsic value.
But Dogecoin, although still down 83% from its peak price in 2021, has remained one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies with a passionate fan base. It is the largest of all meme currencies.
DOGE developers told Decrypt exclusively in 2021 that they were briefly working with Musk on improving the cryptocurrency so it could be widely accepted for payments.
It’s unclear whether Musk still has ambitions to work with developers on DOGE, but that hasn’t stopped the world’s richest man from pumping out the currency on his social media network.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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