I will keep supporting Dogecoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 1655619556000
The price of the token soared nearly 13% on Binance because of Musk’s tweets, hitting an intraday high of $0.05877.
In a complaint filed in a federal court in Manhattan on Friday, plaintiff Keith Johnson accused Musk of racketeering for touting dogecoin on Twitter and driving up its price, only to then let it tumble. Johnson is seeking $86 billion in damages, representing the decline in Dogecoin’s market value since May 2021, and wants it tripled.
According to crypto news tracker Decrypt, from February 2018 to at least February 2019, Musk publicly maintained via Twitter that he owned no cryptocurrency aside from 0.25 BTC.
However, in April 2019, Musk tweeted “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” The cryptocurrency gained immense traction as Musk continued to endorse and hype it on social media. According to Decrypt, dogecoin searches spiked from 2019 through 2020 around the times Musk tweeted about it.
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Developed back in 2013 as a joke, dogecoin has become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies thanks to Musk’s frequent endorsements.
@heydave7 Yeah, I haven’t & won’t sell any Doge
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 1621533395000
He has previously said he believes the meme coin has the potential to become a currency.
@BillyM2k It has potential as a currency
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 1652389843000
The value of dogecoin jumped about 27% after Twitter announced it had struck a takeover deal with Musk in April.
Musk also hinted at dogecoin-Twitter integration in a tweet and said he was working with dogecoin’s team to improve system efficiency.