On April 3, social media giant Twitter changed its icon to that of the popular meme token Dogecoin. Dogecoin rallied sharply in light of the news, with its price surging more than 22% to $0.09784 in one hour. The icon changes happen platform-wide and are directly visible to the social media giant's estimated 360 million monthly active users and visitors to the platform.
Shortly after the icon change, Twitter and the Tesla CEO posted the following meme, which seems to suggest the change will be around for a while: Two days ago, Elon Musk asked a U.S. judge to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit by investors alleging a pyramid scheme to promote Dogecoin. Musk's lawyers reportedly argued that "funny pictures" and "supportive tweets" do not constitute a fraud claim.
It appears that the reasoning behind the change can be attributed in part to a conversation with an administrator of the popular r/WallStreetBets SubReddit on Twitter. "Change the bird logo to the governor," said the WSB president. "Haha, that's disgusting," Elon wrote. On Jan. 18, Dogecoin’s carbon emissions fell by 25 percent after the network developer partnered with Musk. “Working with Doge developers to improve system transaction efficiency. Might be promising,” he tweeted.
Multiple past market studies have shown that Musk’s tweets about DOGE tend to drive up its price. Throughout 2021, Musk promoted the cryptocurrency with slogans such as "Dogecoin is the people's cryptocurrency" and declared himself the "father of Dogecoin." Last year, Tesla launched a new series of whistles inspired by the Cybertruck series. At launch, each whistle costs 1,000 DOGE, or $60. American billionaire Mark Cuban also praised Dogecoin, claiming it could be used to solve Twitter’s spam problem.
