‘God Of Dogecoin’—It’s Not Just Tesla CEO Elon Musk Pumping The ‘Joke’ Bitcoin Rival’s Price

“Joke” bitcoin rival dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocurrency that features a Shiba Inu dog, has again captured the internet’s attention.

The dogecoin price has been catapulted higher by retail traders organized via Reddit’s WallStreetBets and chat app groups in recent weeks, with investors trying to pump the price higher for short-term gains.

Now, after Tesla
TSLA
boss and tongue-in-cheek “dogecoin CEO” Elon Musk sent the dogecoin price sharply higher this week, Kiss frontman and rock star Gene Simmons has jumped on the dogecoin bandwagon.

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“I bought even more dogecoin. Why? Because I believe it will go up. But that’s just me,” Simmons said via Twitter alongside memes and images of himself, Elon Musk and the cryptocurrency—adding: “God of dogecoin.”

Simmons, who first tweeted about bitcoin and cryptocurrency back in September last year, said that as well as dogecoin he owns bitcoin, ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by value, and smaller digital tokens XRP, litecoin and chainlink.

The bitcoin price has soared around 200% since October, surging to over $40,000 per bitcoin before falling back slightly. The blistering bitcoin rally has largely been put down to institutional investors warming to the cryptocurrency and payments giants such as PayPal
PYPL
 
PYPL
 adding their support—though bubble fears have emerged.

Meanwhile, ethereum has climbed to fresh all-time highs this week, pushed on by institutional demand and the burgeoning decentralized finance (DeFi) market that uses cryptocurrency technology to recreate traditional financial products and largely runs on ethereum.

“Not recommending any of these to anyone. But yes, I also bought dogecoin, XRP and others. Make of it what you will,” Simmons tweeted on February 1.

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The dogecoin price, up a blistering near-400% since late January, has failed to move much following the latest attention from Musk and Simmons.

Musk, who quit Twitter this week only to return to the site a day later to tweet about dogecoin, today created a Twitter poll asking whether “the future currency of Earth” would be dogecoin or “all other crypto combined”—dogecoin won.

In 2019, a Twitter poll voted Musk, who has ridden Tesla’s soaring share price to the top of the world’s rich lists over the last year, “dogecoin CEO”—a mantle he’s enthusiastically embraced, regularly adding it to his Twitter bio.