Elon Musk’s dog just added $500M to Dogecoin’s market cap

Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala on May 2. Noam Galai—GC Images

One tweet from Elon Musk can move markets, and on Tuesday night, the Tesla CEO and embattled owner of Twitter pushed up the price of canine-themed cryptocurrencies with just a photo of his dog.

“The new CEO of Twitter is amazing,” gushed Musk, as his dog, dressed in an iconic Silicon Valley-style black turtleneck, sat authoritatively in a large armchair behind a desk.

Shortly afterward, the prices of cryptocurrencies Dogecoin, Floki, and Shiba Inu, all of which are named after dogs, soared. The gains illustrate Musk’s capacity to mint money with just a few trigger-happy taps of his thumbs as well as his focus on his Twitter persona, after he reportedly ordered 80 Twitter engineers to boost his engagement during the Super Bowl.

Dogecoin—arguably the first “memecoin,” or cryptocurrency created specifically as a joke—jumped more than 5% in approximately 15 minutes. The token’s market cap increased by almost $500 million, reaching more than $11.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Floki, a memecoin originally named after Elon Musk’s dog, also rose precipitously. The price of an individual token increased by almost 50% in about an hour, as its total market cap soared by half. And Shiba Inu, another dog-themed memecoin named after the breed of Musk’s dog, also saw a price jump, rising more than 1.5% within the first 15 minutes of Musk’s post.

Musk also tweeted a photo of his dog wearing glasses, a suit, and a tie. “So much better than the other guy,” he wrote, perhaps referencing himself, a CEO who has cut the majority of Twitter’s workforce since taking the company private in October.

Musk said in December he would resign as Twitter’s CEO after he polled his more than 100 million followers about whether he should stay on as “Chief Twit,” and the majority of voters preferred that he step down.

Musk moving markets with tweets is not a new phenomenon. In 2021, he posted that Tesla was making “merch buyable with Doge,” and Dogecoin surged in response. 

Three years before that, Musk tweeted that he “was considering taking Tesla private.” The “funding was secured,” he said. The price of Tesla responded accordingly, and investors lost $12 billion as result, lawyers argued in a subsequent case against Musk. In early February, a jury cleared Musk of any wrongdoing.