After fueling massive rallies in his own sector and others, it seems that Elon Musk is back at it again, anointing a little-known cryptocurrency that started as a joke.
Tanzeel Akhtar reports at Coindesk today that Musk’s recent tweeting includes calling Dogecoin the “people’s crypto” and providing the following cryptic quote along with a graphic of his head photoshopped into a scene from the Lion King where he holds up the DOGE shiba inu instead of a young feline:
“No highs, no lows. Only Doge.”
This, after Musk recently promised to “stay off Twitter for a while” in the wake of the notorious Gamestop rally where analysts suggest a stray comment by Musk moved markets significantly.
Musk’s outsized impact on stocks starts with the meteoric rise of his own company, Tesla. The dominance in the EV market led TSLA to rocket up some 800% and more over the past year.
That, plus GME and other anecdotal stock volatility, suggests Musk can nearly flood or starve an equity single-handedly.
DOGE adds fuel to this fire: the coin has recently spiked 50% in value.
To be fair, this is not the only time that Dogecoin has reportedly gained from celebrity endorsement: comments by “Tiger King” star Carol Baskin and adult actress Angela White both spawned their own rises in the dark horse crypto coin, which is now considered the 12th largest by market value.
But Musk has a lot of clout, to put it mildly, and with his offhand DOGE sentiments on record, who knows what we’ll see happen this week? As BB reports, Musk recently publicly posited the “most entertaining and ironic outcome” if Dogecoin “becomes the currency of Earth in the future.” It would be great for science fiction nerds, but it’s just the kind of capricious thing that central bank officials and others in public administration want desperately to avoid. Keep an eye out as Janet Yellen meets with the SEC, the CFTC and others to look at how to keep “control” of the markets in the Internet age.