Dogecoin spikes after Elon Musk replaces Twitter bird with shiba inu

The price of the dogecoin cryptocurrency shot up more than 30 per cent after Elon Musk replaced Twitter’s bird symbol with one of the coin’s shiba inu dog.

The move by the billionaire came after his lawyers on Friday asked a federal judge to throw out a $258bn lawsuit accusing the entrepreneur of manipulating dogecoin’s price and driving it up by 36,000 per cent.

Following the change to the Twitter logo Mr Musk shared a meme about it on his own Twitter account, which has more than 133 million followers.

Mr Musk has repeatedly tweeted about the cryptocurrency, which was first started as a joke coin in 2013, and most of his comments about it have moved its price.

Dogecoin is the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency with a market cap of around $13bn according to CoinMarketCap.com.

In court filings for the lawsuit, which was filed against Mr Musk in 2022, his lawyers stated that his comments on dogecoin were “innocuous and often silly.”

The lawsuit names Twitter, Tesla and the Boring Company in the lawsuit.

In 2021 the value of dogecoin dropped after Elon Musk mentioned it during a hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live.

During his monologue, his mother, Maye Musk, made an appearance to ask him what he had got her for Mother’s Day.

“I’m excited for my Mother’s Day gift,” Maye Musk said. “I just hope it’s not dogecoin!”

“It is,” Elon Musk said. “It sure is.”

And during the Weekend Update segment, he appeared as a character who could not explain what dogecoin actually was, before admitting it was just “a hustle.”

In December 2021, Mr Musk announced that Tesla would start accepting dogecoin for some merchandise, with the price rising by 20 per cent.

In January 2022 when he tweeted that dogecoin payments were live its price increased by 15 per cent.

The Independent reached out to Twitter for comment and received back an automatic email with the poop emoji as Mr Musk has promised for all press requests.