By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – A joke tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sent the price of Dogecoin rocketing on Thursday.
The self-appointed Technoking of Tesla tweeted that another of his companies, SpaceX, “is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon”.
“To the moon” is a phrase often used by retail traders when they forecast the price of an asset, such as Dogecoin, to continue to move higher.
On the face of it, the tweet is complete nonsense but that didn’t stop traders from piling in and buying Dogecoin on the back of it. The price jumped as much as 30% in a short period of time following the tweet before paring back some of the move. The year-to-date gains in the cryptocurrency now stand at around 1,500%.
Musk and Dogecoin
It is not the first time that Musk has moved cryptocurrencies using his Twitter account. He has regularly boosted the price of Dogecoin by tweeting about the cryptocurrency previously.
However, back in February, he also issued caution on his social media account, saying he would support major holders of Dogecoin should they decide to sell their coins.
Musk’s company Tesla also recently announced they would be accepting Bitcoin as payment for their vehicles if customers wished to purchase using the world’s largest digital asset. The corporate acceptance of digital assets in 2021 has been the primary reason why cryptocurrencies have performed so well this year.