On Monday, Twitter changed the logo on its web and mobile browser to the popular Doge meme, the icon used by the infamous Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency known as a “memecoin.” Dogecoin rallied 20% in just 30 minutes as the internet took notice.
Elon Musk has long been a Dogecoin booster, and his tweets and appearances on television programs, including Saturday Night Live, have frequently impacted the value of the cryptocurrency.
He has gleefully moved the memecoin’s market since taking over as CEO of the social media platform in October. In February, after tweeting a picture of his own pet, a Shiba Inu like the Dogecoin mascot, the token’s market cap increased by $500 million.
Dogecoin was the first memecoin, or a cryptocurrency that lacks any underlying value aside from its status as a joke. Its levity has not prevented the token from accumulating a massive following, with a market cap surpassing $13 billion. (Each coin is still worth less than 10 cents.)
Musk, an infamous promoter of memes, has often latched on to Dogecoin’s internet popularity, even before buying Twitter. In December 2021, he boasted that Tesla would begin accepting Dogecoin for some of its merchandise.
The new CEO of Twitter is amazing pic.twitter.com/yBqWFUDIQH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2023
With Musk’s Twitter experiment proving a financial challenge, experts have speculated as to his long-term plan for the platform. One possible path forward is transforming it into a payments service, where users would be able to transfer both fiat and cryptocurrency to creators and other users.
He first floated payments for Twitter in a pitch deck to investors in May—the platform currently has a tipping feature, although it only generates around $15 million annually. In January, the Financial Times reported that the company was applying for regulatory licenses to operate across the U.S. as a payment processor.
Dogecoin has not been Musk’s sole foray into crypto. Tesla bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin in February 2021, although the company offloaded 75% of its holdings amid a market downturn in mid-2022.
After Twitter’s logo was changed, users rushed to speculate as to what happened, with theories ranging from its (relative) comedic value to a ploy by Musk to increase Dogecoin’s value and shore up the social media platform’s massive losses.
it would be amazing if he used this to pump doge back to 50 cents and then dumped like $1bn into the market so he can make an interest payment on twitter’s loans
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 3, 2023
When Fortune reached out to Twitter’s press account to inquire about its most recent Doge-themed stunt, it automatically replied with another meme championed by the mercurial founder: the poop emoji.
Musk himself shed light on the decision a couple hours after the change, tweeting an exchange he had with a user who recommended he buy Twitter and change the logo to a dodge.
As promised pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
“Haha that would sickkk [sic],” Musk replied at the time.
