Billy Markus, the co-founder of Dogecoin, tweeted on May 13: “the reason I like dogecoin is because it knows it is stupid.” Elon Musk responded almost immediately, stating, “It has potential as a currency,” driving the doge community into an optimistic frenzy.
Billy Markus, also known on Twitter as “shibetoshi nakamoto,” and Jackson Palmer, a former Adobe software engineer, are the co-creators of DOGE. Despite his support for the canine-themed coin, Markus abandoned DOGE years ago, citing problems such as scams and a “sociopath” gaining control of the community.
Musk’s response, which has received over 50k likes as of writing, drew a lot of attention from various Dogecoin supporters who hoped it would boost DOGE’s price.
And while it is quite ironic that DOGE is down almost 87% since Musk promoted the coin on Saturday Night Live (SNL) last year, the Tesla co-founder has become a leading influencer for the coin due to his pro-growth stance on the cryptocurrency.
In an interview with TIME magazine, in which he was selected person of the year for 2021, Musk hailed DOGE as a superior digital currency to Bitcoin. Later in the year, he claimed that Tesla would begin accepting cryptocurrency payments for merchandise including plans to do the same for Starlink.
The billionaire just acquired a significant stake in Twitter last month. On April 25th, he announced plans to buy the company for $44 billion and take it private, sending DOGE up 34% on the hype that he would accept the coin as payment on Twitter. While these are just rumours, Musk has previously expressed interest in developing a Dogecoin-centered digital wallet or a full-fledged DOGE-based payment platform that would be free for Twitter users.
While it is difficult to predict the direction of price, it is safe to say that Musk will play a role in driving a price recovery as he continues to promote the coin.
As of this writing, DOGE is trading at $0.09 after falling to a low of $0.07 on Friday as a result of a marketwide downturn triggered by UST’s depegging.
