<\/p>\n
Was it a delayed April Fools\u2019 Day prank, a trolling response to Elon Musk\u2019s ongoing lawsuit, or a sign Twitter would integrate the OG joke cryptocurrency? These were among the countless questions ricocheting around the Twitter-sphere after the social media platform\u2019s blue bird icon was replaced by Dogecoin\u2019s shiba inu logo on April 3.<\/p>\n
The confusion was hardly dispelled by Elon Musk\u2019s explanation for the change, a tweet that simply read, \u201cAs promised,\u201d accompanied with a screenshot of his 2022 conversation with a user who suggested flipping the bird in favor of Doge. Dogecoin chimed in by tweeting<\/a>: \u201cVery currency. Wow. Much Coin. How Money. So Crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n Irrespective of the thinking behind the move (or lack thereof), the price of Dogecoin spiked dramatically from $0.077 on April 3 to $0.090 at the time of writing. It\u2019s a 16 percent increase that represents the coin\u2019s highest value in nearly six months.<\/p>\n Despite these gains, Dogecoin is still trading 86 percent below its 2021 peak. Musk has been a tongue-in-cheek booster of Dogecoin for several years and it featured prominently in the Saturday Night Live<\/em> he hosted in 2021. Since first tweeting about Dogecoin in April 2019, the coin\u2019s value has increased 2,547 percent.<\/p>\n Aside from the market volatility sparked by the elevated presence of the shiba inu on the social media, it renewed discussions that Dogecoin was on track to find a place<\/a> in Twitter\u2019s future<\/a>. This is extremely unlikely. Dogecoin, which is a clone of Bitcoin and was released as a joke in 2013, is a proof-of-work coin (read: really bad for the environment) with slow transaction speeds and ultimately little utility<\/a> for Twitter.<\/p>\n Another theory is that Musk is trolling the plaintiffs who have brought a $258-billion racketeering lawsuit against him. The lawsuit brought by Dogecoin investors<\/a> accuses Musk of running a pyramid scheme and using his position of influence to drive up the price of Dogecoin and then letting it crash. On March 31, days before Twitter\u2019s image change, Musk asked a U.S. judge to throw out the case, labeling it a \u201cfanciful work of fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk appeared to follow through on another one of his pet jokes on April 5 when the \u2018W\u2019 on the sign of Twitter\u2019s headquarters was covered, a reference to a poll Musk took in April 2022 that asked if he should \u201cdelete the \u2018w\u2019 in Twitter?\u201d<\/p>\n