Its value dogecoin was launched today, a few hours after the Elon Muskits owner Twitterchose to use the dog figure associated with the cryptocurrency as a logo, while he himself faces prosecution for promoting the digital currency.

Musk’s move to replace Twitter’s historic blue bird symbol, whether permanent or a limited-time “joke,” has sent dogecoin soaring from $0.08 to over $0.10, an increase of more than 20 %.

The Twitter owner, who has 133 million followers, has long used the social network to display his own and idiosyncratic humor and has promoted dogecoin, a highly volatile cryptocurrency originally created for fun, through the platform.

Dogecoin was created in 2013 and was an ironic response to two web phenomena: cryptocurrencies, which proliferated after the appearance of bitcoin, and Shiba Inu photo montages that had flooded the Web.

Buoyed by a buying frenzy of such securities in early 2021 coupled with a flurry of positive tweets from Elon Musk, dogecoin soared above 70 cents in May 2021, only to retreat after the broadcast of a satirical show in which Musk called cryptocurrency “fraud”.

An investor who lost money betting on dogecoin filed a lawsuit in June 2022 seeking $258 billion in damages from Elon Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX. The billionaire denied the charges.

Twitter’s logo change sparked a flurry of messages, including from Elon Musk, who uploaded a chat with a user to the platform last year in which he promised to buy Twitter and make its logo a Shiba Inu.