Dogecoin spiked as much as 29% on Thursday to its highest since mid-February after Elon Musk tweeted about his space exploration company putting a “literal” version of the meme cryptocurrency on the moon.
At 6:25 am ET, the Tesla CEO and SpaceX published a tweet to his 50 million followers saying “SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.”
Dogecoin rose to a high of $0.70 on the Bittrex exchange, marking a 29% rise from the point at which Musk tweeted. It was last at $0.634 around 09:18 ET, up around 18% from that same time.
This isn’t the first time the newly self-appointed “Technoking” of Tesla has tweeted about the token currency. The billionaire in February published a one-word tweet that sent dogecoin up by 25% in minutes.
Dogecoin, which started as a joke in 2013, has shot to fame thanks to well-known backers such as Musk, but also rapper Snoop Dogg and Kiss member Gene Simmons. For a short time, dogecoin boasted a market valuation of $10 billion, making it more valuable than a number of large companies.