Elon Musk swaps Twitter Bird logo for Doge and Dogecoin value goes skyrocketing. Market manipulation much?

Have you checked Twitter on the web yet? The iconic Twitter blue bird logo above the home button on the web page is gone. Instead, it has been replaced by a meme - the doge meme to be exact. With Elon Musk at Twitter, these changes shouldn't be surprising. 

While it seems like a joke too late for April Fool's day, the story and its unintended (or intended) consequences go far. It is also not known whether the change is temporary or permanent.

What's with the doge meme?

• The "doge" popularly represents Dogecoin cryptocurrency and blockchain. The same one that Elon Musk has backed for several years. 
• The cryptocurrency was created as a joke in 2013 to mock other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. And now, it is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world by market capitalisation. 
• And Dogecoin logo is the face of a real-life pup, whose picture went viral around 2010. The dog is a Shiba Inu rescue named Kabosu from Japan. 
• Elon Musk has been obsessed with the dog breed, the meme, and the cryptocurrency for a while. 
• He also has a Shiba Inu dog named Floki, who he referred to as the CEO of Twitter. 

The new CEO of Twitter is amazing pic.twitter.com/yBqWFUDIQH

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2023

• Elon Musk tweeted about the change using a screenshot of a conversation he had with a fellow Twitter user in March 2022. 
• This conversation is in the context of Musk railing against the old Twitter management's policies on free speech, which he claimed was biased.

As promised pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023 

• So far, it seems the change has not been brought to the mobile app. 

What's not a joke:

This silly little change, true to Elon Musk's style, is not so silly. It has legal and financial context to it. 

• For one, Dogecoin's value has gone skyrocketing for the first time in months after Elon Musk changed the Twitter logo to the doge meme. 
• The graph below explains the impact of Elon Musk's actions on Twitter on cryptocurrency. The spike is said to be more than 30%. 

• It looks like a pump. It's not sure if a dump is coming soon. 

The Dogecoin pyramid scheme lawsuit:

• Elon Musk was sued for an eyewatering sum of $258 billion by a few investors of Dogecoin for running a pyramid scheme fraud in 2022. 
• On March 31, Elon Musk and Twitter's lawyers sought to dismiss the lawsuit.

Context: Elon Musk's net worth is around $195 billion according to Forbes's real-time billionaires list as of publishing this article. Does that mean Musk goes bankrupt if the lawsuit goes against his favour and he has to pay the entire sum?

• Investors accused Musk of deliberately driving up the value of Dogecoin through his various public statements from the Saturday Night Live appearance to his many tweets for over two years and then letting the cryptocurrency crash. 
• They claim that Musk promoted Dogecoin despite knowing that it lacked any intrinsic value. Investors further claimed that this generated billions of dollars in profits but at their expense. 
• Musk's lawyers claimed on Friday that his public statements about Dogecoin are "innocuous and often silly tweets".

• Musk's side also claimed that the investors did not explain exactly how Elon Musk's words such as "Dogecoin Rulz" and "no highs, no lows, only Doge" defrauded them or concealed the risks he was in the know of. 
• However, Elon Musk's support of Dogecoin goes beyond silly words on Twitter. Every time he's tweeted about the coin, the value of the coin has shot up.
• Moreover, Musk has used his other company Tesla to promote Dogecoin by making it an acceptable form of payment for some merchandise. 
• Tesla also holds digital assets on its books, including bitcoin. Musk has also indicated he holds Dogecoin personally too. 
• And every time, Musk announced Tesla's initiative to accept Dogecoin, the value of the coin went soaring. 
• Tesla and Boring Company (yet another Musk company) are named in the lawsuit. 

[ALSO READ: Why is Elon Musk's company Neuralink facing federal investigation?]

Does this mean that Elon Musk is manipulating the value of Dogecoin?

• Elon Musk's words on Twitter in particular aren't as silly as he claims them to be, since it does have a market-moving impact. 
• This is not the first time Musk's tweets have been held responsible for market manipulation and fraud. He was earlier sued for a 2018 tweet claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private. 

[ALSO READ: 10 reasons why Elon Musk should uninstall Twitter and throw away his phone]

• This resulted in Tesla's value shooting up, only to tank days later when it was revealed that there was no deal in place. 
• However, the court sided with Musk in this case. And Musk's lawyers argued that his tweets should not be taken too seriously. 

But since Musk insists on doing all kinds of business only on Twitter, from making important corporate announcements to dealing with employees and others, maybe his actions on Twitter should be taken more seriously. And after all, his Twitter actions have already had multiple implications outside of Twitter. 

[ALSO READ: It is April 3 and your Twitter Blue Tick is still around cos Elon Musk has a strange plan]