If Elon Musk has been raining and shining on Twitter since he took over the platform in October 2022, he has also been running the Dogecoin threads since 2021. Far from Bitcoin (25,500 euros) or Ethereum (1,600 euros), this cryptocurrency can be bought for just a few cents. This does not prevent the businessman from having participated in inflating his price “by more than 36,000% in the last two years before dropping it.”
At least that’s what a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court says, says the US site Gizmodo. The plaintiffs are demanding $258 billion from Elon Musk for manipulating the price of Dogecoin through posts on Twitter, but also through his Tesla company.
April Fool’s Day Endings
On Friday, March 31, the billionaire’s lawyers asked that the complaint be dismissed. They say it is unfounded. According to them, “the plaintiffs have never described how Elon Musk’s statements in favor of Dogecoin harmed anyone.”
But while the first articles about this complaint began to be published on Monday, in particular by the British newspaper The Independent, Twitter suddenly changed its logo to show a dog’s head: the symbol of Dogecoin.
While many thought this was a belated April Fool’s joke, this could be a clever way to divert attention from the complaint. Now, when searching the internet, the names of Elon Musk and the cryptocurrency are first associated with this surprising logo change rather than the legal case.
Up to 60 euro cents
Originally, Dogecoin is mostly a joke. It was created in 2013 when the internet was flooded with montages of Shiba Inu, a Japanese dog breed. At the same time, many cryptocurrencies are chasing the success of Bitcoin. The dog’s head then becomes the face of Dogecoin.
It took more than seven years before the price of the cryptocurrency surpassed the euro cent in early 2021. In the first part of the year, Elon Musk’s Twitter posts gave Dogecoin visibility. The praise is such that the price shoots up to reach 60 euro cents in April 2021. At the end of the year, Elon Musk did it again by announcing that Tesla would accept payments in Dogecoin.
The height of the matter, the change of the Twitter logo has once again caused the price of Dogecoin to fluctuate. While it was worth just over seven cents over the weekend, the cryptocurrency is now hovering around nine cents. An admittedly minimal increase in value, but still representing a 25% increase in the last 24 hours.
Source: BFM TV
