The unlikely romance between the world’s richest man and a cryptocurrency that started as a joke has transformed the digital currency landscape in ways few could have predicted.
Dogecoin, created in 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a lighthearted spoof of cryptocurrency culture, has found an unlikely champion in Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
What began with a simple tweet in April 2019—where Musk called Dogecoin his “favorite cryptocurrency”—sparked a financial phenomenon.
Musk’s casual endorsement ignited a financial wildfire that transformed a joke coin into a market sensation.
That initial endorsement doubled Dogecoin’s price overnight from $0.002 to $0.004, a modest beginning to what would become a pattern of Musk-triggered market movements.
The cryptocurrency, based on Litecoin’s protocol and featuring the now-iconic Shiba Inu dog meme, wasn’t designed for investment stardom.
Using scrypt technology in its proof-of-work algorithm (think of it as the mathematical puzzle miners solve to verify transactions—different from Bitcoin’s approach), Dogecoin was originally created as a fun alternative to more serious digital currencies.
The coin embodies the community’s motto to Do Only Good Everyday, supporting various charitable initiatives since its inception.
Musk’s influence on Dogecoin reached new heights in 2021 when his tweets repeatedly sent the cryptocurrency soaring.
On April 15, 2021, a single image posted by Musk caused Dogecoin’s price to surge over 100%.
This kind of volatility has become Dogecoin’s calling card—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, as demonstrated by the 29.5% price drop following Musk’s May 2021 appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Beyond social media promotion, Musk integrated Dogecoin into his business operations when Tesla began accepting it as payment for select merchandise.
This move helped legitimize what many had dismissed as merely a meme coin.
Tesla’s adoption highlighted Dogecoin’s lower transaction fees compared to Bitcoin, making it more practical for everyday purchases.
In 2021, SpaceX announced a Dogecoin-funded Moon mission that would further cement the cryptocurrency’s place in Musk’s business ventures.
More recently, Musk has pivoted to using the DOGE acronym in a different context—the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an initiative he’s leading under President Trump’s administration aimed at reducing federal spending.
This curious overlap between cryptocurrency culture and government reform demonstrates how thoroughly Musk has woven Dogecoin into his public persona, creating a unique intersection of finance, technology, and political influence.
