Dogecoin, Shiba Inu Prices Pump as Elon Musk Doubles Down on DOGE

Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, the crypto market’s two biggest “meme coins,” are skyrocketing today. At the time of writing, Shiba Inu, or SHIB, was up 28.2% in the past 24 hours while Dogecoin jumped by 13%. The move follows comments by Tesla SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today at Qatar Economic Forum in Doha in which he reiterated his support for DOGE.

The price of Dogecoin—which is listed as DOGE—stood at $0.06751. It is the 10th biggest cryptocurrency (again) with a market cap of $8.9 billion. Just last week, it stood in the 11th position. 

Shiba Inu was trading for $0.00001048. The ERC-20 token (a cryptocurrency which runs on the Ethereum network) is a Dogecoin competitor and the 14th biggest digital asset by market cap—standing at $5.7 billion. 

Both cryptocurrencies, which don’t really have much utility, are highly volatile. Today's price action likely has something to do with Musk, who has a habit of pumping Dogecoin with his tweets and comments. Today, Musk doubled down on his support of DOGE in an interview with Bloomberg.

“I intend to personally support Dogecoin, because I just know a lot of people who are not that wealthy who have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin—so I’m responding to those people,” he said.

The billionaire entrepreneur also said that his own employees had asked him to support the cryptocurrency. “They've asked me to support Dogecoin, so I'm doing so,” said Musk.

Dogecoin was originally designed in 2013 as a joke. Its creators thought the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was too serious so created an asset based on a dog meme. 

No one really knew much about it but then Elon Musk—the world’s richest man who is known for his wacky tweets—started posting memes of it on social media in 2020. It developed a cult following and its price soared. 

Musk has since said that Dogecoin could be a Bitcoin rival and used for payments—and developers are currently working on making that a reality. 

SHIB exploded on the scene in 2021 as an “experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building.” SHIB is an Ethereum-based token that is also based on the same Shiba Inu meme as Dogecoin. And like DOGE, the token has become a highly speculative asset that has generated large returns for its early investors.