It’s a new day and a new Elon Musk news in its tow. Tesla CEO who has been fueling the rally of cryptocurrency took to Twitter on February 10 and said he had bought Dogecoin for his son. In one of his tweets, Musk said, “Bought some dogecoin for lil X, so he can be a toddler hodler,” and further reaffirmed his position in the support of cryptocurrency. 

Musk’s tweet comes after Tesla revealed on Monday that it had bought bitcoins worth $1.5 billion and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, sending the cryptocurrency shooting 10% higher. After the announcement, Bitcoin’s value reached a staggering $44,200 per unit. 

Let’s come back to Musk’s recent Tweet about him buying Dogecoin for his son. The value of the cryptocurrency started to soar like a kite in a windy sky after his tweet and has led to an all-time high of $0.073685. This value is up about 35% compared to the low of $0.048356 dogecoin was previously at. 

The value of the coin is not only backed by Elon Musk, but also by rapper Snoop Dogg. The rapper on February 7 took to Twitter and posted a picture of the dogecoin mascot morphed over a woman. In his tweet, Snoop Dogg also tagged Elon Musk.  

Dogecoin’s value started to soar after Musk tweeted the image of rocket with a trailing tweet “Doge”. This was enough for the cryptocurrency’s price to skyrocket.  

Musk, who carries 45.2 million Twitter followers in his bag has been widely outspoken about his interest in the cryptocurrency. He was recently in the news for the GameStop trading frenzy and for being vocal about his stance on cryptocurrency on the voice-only app Clubhouse.  

But Musk has been pushing hard on inflating the value of Dogecoin and has been using his social media influence to do so. The billionaire recently tweeted an image of a rocket going to the moon and wrote “Doge” as a caption. The same day he also tweeted, “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto.” 

Subsequently, Musk tweeted “No highs, no lows, only doge.” 

Perhaps one of the funniest tweets that came about in the dogecoin frenzy was a screencap of the iconic The Lion King scene where Rafiki holds Simba high on the cliff. The image had Musk’s face morphed on Rafiki and the Shiba-inu dog, which serves as the mascot of dogecoin, morphed over Simba’s face. 

The Dogecoin is an altcoin (a cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin) that was created in 2013 by a man named Jackson Palmer. According to The New York Times, the cryptocurrency was made as a joke and was Palmer’s satirical taken on other cryptocurrencies. The joke cryptocurrency works on the same principles as all other cryptocurrencies do with a small difference. It has the doge meme infused on it.  

Although Musk’s tweets are loved and shared by netizens across the world, there are people who have remained critical of his actions. Nick Carter, a US-based venture capitalized along with hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz have condemned Musk’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies as “disconcerting”. 

Nick Carter in a CNBC held live streamed said that there would be a lot of people who are “going to lose money on dogecoin”. Carter went on to label dogecoin as ‘empty shell for people’s expectations’ and said that it doesn’t offer anything new in terms of technology. Later in the interview, Carter said how Dogecoin which was initially ‘interesting’ is now an ‘empty husk’.  

With all said and done, one can’t really deny the power that is vested in the hands of Elon Musk by his Twitter following. Musk’s constant dogecoin-centric Tweets has made Dogecoin take a position in the top 10 virtual currencies in the world. According to Coindesk, a cryptocurrency news platform, Dogecoin has a market cap of $9.36 billion. It would be interesting to see whether Musk continues his “Dogemission” and helps the virtual currency hit a $10 billion market cap in the coming days or not.  

 Also read: Cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which was founded as a joke, soars over 800% in 24 hours