Meme coins surge following Elon Musk’s tweet

After Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, tweeted a meme with his pup Floki acting as the company’s new leader, several Shiba Inu-themed meme coins have seen an increase in value. Dogecoin has surged more than 7% over the past day alone, according to Coingecko crypto metrics.

Elon Musk’s tweet caused a significant surge in the price of Floki Inu. Within an hour of his post, Floki Inu moved from $0.000022 to over $0.000033—a 35.5% gain. Similarly, the SHIBA token also experienced an immense price increase; opening at around $0.0000122 and then rising by almost 5%, reaching $0.0000128 within no time after Musk’s tweet went live.

Elon Musk is globally renowned for his ardent support of cryptocurrency. However, his devoted followers have affectionately christened him the “Dogefather” about the famous moniker “Godfather,” due to how his tweets concerning Dogecoin tend to improve its worth rapidly.

It’s not the first time that DOGE has risen dramatically in response to one of Elon Musk’s tweets. Just recently, his tweet revealing he and Rupert Murdoch had been discussing Dogecoin at the Super Bowl caused an impressive 5% increase. Additionally, late January saw a surge in value as news spread of Twitter potentially creating a system for crypto payments.

A study by blockchain analytics firm Santiment in December 2022 demonstrated that dramatic rises of DOGE and SHIB – two meme currencies – typically signify an impending market-wide selloff.

After a period of market decline due in part to FTX, the last three months have seen markets start to rebound. Bitcoin made back its losses by mid-January, and many altcoins experienced significant gains. Over this time frame, Bitcoin gained 34%, SHIB surged by 40%, and Floki skyrocketed by 242%.