A cryptocurrency originally invented as a joke, called dogecoin, has seen its value skyrocket after a series of tweets from Tesla founder Elon Musk.
It surged by more than 40 per cent on Thursday to $0.058 ($A0.10) after the billionaire’s backing as traders piled in to buy up stocks.
Despite announcing a break from Twitter on Tuesday, Mr Musk returned just two days later and wrote “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto.”
He followed that up with: “No highs, no lows, only Doge.”
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The cryptocurrency was invented as a “fun version of bitcoin” by software engineers and adopted as its logo a famous internet meme called “Doge” of a Shiba Inu dog.
In a nod to the SpaceX founder’s share advice, one user tweeted a meme created from a famous scene in Disney’s Lion King, with Mr Musk’s face photoshopped onto Rafiki’s body and Doge meme dog’s head onto the lion cub Simba.
Mr Musk is also responsible for sending the price of dogecoin soaring last week after he tweeted a parody of a Vogue magazine cover, titled “Dogue”. But there is speculation he is not being serious when it comes to the joke cryptocurrency.
“Arguably the most entertaining outcome and the most ironic outcome would be dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth in the future,” Mr Musk said on the audio-chat app Clubhouse, according to Newsweek.
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But tweets from Mr Musk have made a bunch of Reddit threads believe that the billionaire supports their efforts to drive up the coin’s price, with users gunning for the cryptocurrency to hit a value of $US1 per coin ($A1.31).
The surge has still left dogecoin’s market value at $US6.6 billion (that’s more than $A8.7 billion), according to cryptocurrency website Coindesk.
Mr Musk has influenced the stock prices of other companies in recent weeks with tweets about GameStop and Etsy.
Originally published as Bitcoin parody gets boost from Musk
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