As Dogecoin makes a comeback off the back of Bitcoin’s surge, some may be pondering: Where did the asset come from? What’s it for? And what’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk got to do with it?
The original meme coin’s boom largely has the world’s richest man to thank. Musk’s obsession with shitposting helped boost the coin to a top 10 cryptocurrency.
It’s been a wacky ride over the past few years, culminating in Musk's appointment to co-lead a government agency called D.O.G.E.—yes, really. But we'll explain it all.
2018: What the DOGE?
Dogecoin is the biggest and oldest meme coin and the second-biggest proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It was created in 2013 as a joke by developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer.
The idea was to poke fun at the huge number of altcoins and crypto projects entering the market following Bitcoin’s rapid ascent, and the coin enjoyed relative obscurity and a low price during its early years.
But then along came Musk. The eccentric billionaire asked Palmer in a 2018 tweet to help with the Twitter bot problem. Scammers had created a number of fake high-profile accounts, including Musk’s, in order to push crypto cons. The scams typically posted fake Ethereum giveaways.
It was the first real interest Musk had shown in Dogecoin.
2019: The pump begins
Musk started to pump Dogecoin the next year. “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency,” he wrote in April 2019, in response to a screenshot of a poll from the official Dogecoin account asking who should be the cryptocurrency’s CEO. “It’s pretty cool.”
— Eva FoX 🦊 Claudius Nero's Legion (@EvaFoxU) May 2, 2021
The post would be the first of many to cause the asset’s value to rocket upwards. Soon after Musk’s first tweet about Dogecoin, the market cap of the coin hit $400 million and crypto exchange Huobi listed it.
Musk being Musk, however, didn’t stop there: He branded himself Dogecoin’s CEO—briefly—on Twitter before continuing to fire out tweets asking if the coin is “really a valid form of currency” or posting memes associated with the original dog-coin.
2020/2021: Bull run arrives
Musk continued to pump Dogecoin’s price here and there with his tweets, but things really got started during the 2021 bull run. Major exchanges like Coinbase Pro listed Dogecoin and the asset developed a bigger cult following, not to mention growing mainstream awareness.
DOGE gained a market cap bigger than many companies in the S&P 500. And developers exclusively told Decrypt that they had secretly been working with Musk since 2019 to make the coin a valid payment method and a greener, cheaper alternative to Bitcoin.
But things got stranger when Musk called himself the “Dogefather” ahead of a "Saturday Night Live" skit about the cryptocurrency—again sending the asset’s price roaring upwards. DOGE would jump to its all-time high price of about $0.73 at this time.
Musk’s "SNL" appearance ended up being underwhelming for Doge fans, with the SpaceX boss and his mother’s allusions to the coin ultimately pushing its price down. Still, it continued to bring the strange world of meme coins to the mainstream.
Elon Musk's Mom Name-Drops Dogecoin on SNL, Price Plunges
Well, this is awkward. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, hosted Saturday Night Live this evening. And Dogecoin's unofficial spokesperson has jokes about the joke coin. Musk is neither an actor nor a comedian, but he is entertaining. With plenty to say about space exploration and Thai cave rescues, Musk came into the sketch program as a polarizing public figure/performance artist. But no one in crypto cared about any of that. They just wanted to know: Would he use the late-night appearanc...
Later that year, Musk announced that his rocket company, SpaceX, would launch a satellite to the moon—completely funded by the cryptocurrency.
2022: Tesla/Twitter mania
The Doge mania continued into 2022 when Musk’s car company started accepting Dogecoin for merchandise.
Dogecoin continued to experience price bumps when Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it to X, hinting that it would also become a payments platform that might, eventually, integrate the O.G. meme coin.
Things came back to bite Musk later that year, though, when an American man hit the billionaire and Tesla and SpaceX with a $258 billion lawsuit for allegedly pumping Dogecoin—an asset with “no value at all,” according to the original filing.
Tesla, Musk Dodge $258 Billion Dogecoin Lawsuit as Judge Dismisses Case
On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed a class action lawsuit accusing Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, of market manipulation through public praise of Dogecoin. The plaintiffs, representing investors who claimed to have lost money due to Musk’s comments on social media in recent years, had sought $86 billion in damages, with a request for triple damages, bringing the total to $258 billion. The lawsuit centered on Musk’s various public statements about Dogecoin, primarily made via posts on X (forme...
But Musk and his lawyers scored a win this year when a judge sided with them and dismissed the lawsuit, calling the tech entrepreneur’s tweets about Dogecoin “aspirational and puffery,” and noting that “no reasonable investor could rely upon them.”
2024: Trump, Musk, and D.O.G.E.
Dogecoin had a relatively quiet 2023, but the meme coin has soared in recent months following Musk’s support of Republican Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.
That’s mostly because Trump said that Musk would lead a government efficiency commission ahead of being voted back into the seat of power; Musk claimed that the department would be called the Department of Governmental Efficiency—an acronym that matches Dogecoin’s ticker.
Whenever Musk mentioned his future political role with the so-called D.O.G.E. ahead of the election, the price of Dogecoin jumped.
'I Just Like Dogecoin': Elon Musk Pumps Meme Coin to 4-Month High
Elon Musk said over the weekend that he’s not “actively involved” in crypto. He just likes Dogecoin. At a pro-Donald Trump political rally in Pennsylvania Sunday, the world’s richest man was asked whether he would try and get the use of blockchain technology into government. Musk is now an outspoken Republican and is endorsing ex-President Trump for another term in the White House. Trump has said that Musk, a longtime Dogecoin (DOGE) fan, may lead a government efficiency commission—dubbed the D...
But before Trump’s shock election win last week, Musk revealed what he has probably thought all along: that he isn’t seriously interested or involved in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or any cryptocurrency. He just likes the meme coin.
“I’m actually not actively involved in crypto,” he said at a rally. “I make Dogecoin jokes and stuff because I just kind of like Dogecoin—because it’s got the best sense of humor and it has dogs and memes, and I love all those things.”
Trump Taps Dogecoin Fan Elon Musk to Lead DOGE Agency With Vivek Ramaswamy
On Tuesday night, President-elect Donald Trump appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, also known as D.O.GE. “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement on X, calling the move essential to the “Save America” movement....
Still, the price of Dogecoin boomed higher this week, hitting a three-year high price of about $0.43. And late Tuesday, President-elect Trump finally made it official that Musk, along with Bitcoin-savvy entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, would lead the new administration’s department
Trump is even selling t-shirts showing himself and Musk alongside Doge-esque artwork.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
