• Elon Musk changed his Twitter profile picture to express support for Dogecoin, sending the price 12.78 percent up.
• The billionaire has been greatly criticized for using his celebrity status to manipulate the crypto market.

Elon Musk might have caused the price of Dogecoin to rise more than 12 percent from $0.18 to $0.20 overnight. This happened as the Tesla CEO and a Dogecoin proponent expressed his support for Dogecoin. He changed his Twitter display picture to a headshot of himself with the Dogecoin logo reflecting on his aviators. However, the price surge was short-lived as the price fell back to $0.179 in the hours that followed.

Over time, the billionaire has come to be known as one of the price-moving factors of the cryptocurrency markets. His regular Twitter posts cause drastic changes. More recently, the price swings have been small but noticeable.

Elon Musk and Dogecoin relationship

Earlier on, Musk tweeted about his son’s (X) Dogecoin investment, saying that his son is holding rather than selling. He also demonstrated his son’s confidence in the DOGE community, adding that his actions proved the same.

“Lil X hodling his Doge like a champ. Never said the word “sell” even once!”, read Musk’s tweet.

Elon Musk’s Twitter posts caused a major Bitcoin price upheaval, falling from its mid-April $60,000 high to now half that value. This is after he criticized the coin for its lack of eco-friendly mining methods. Additionally, he struck out Bitcoin as a mode of payment for Tesla electric cars. The crypto community has since expressed great frustration in his behaviour and effects.

Nevertheless, just as Bitcoin and altcoins were beginning to gain momentum, Musk tweeted about his broken relationship with Bitcoin. This deepened the price drop.

Despite all this, the tycoon maintained that Tesla is still holding the Bitcoin reserves it had. There has been no public news of whether or not the company’s Bitcoin stock is still in place.

Backlash on Musk’s ‘trolling’ behaviour

The Tesla CEO has been receiving great admonishment for using his celebrity status to manipulate the crypto market. Jackson Palmer, DOGE’s co-founder, recently took to Twitter to condemn all cryptocurrencies, including his creation. He vented at the volatility of the crypto market saying billionaires are taking advantage to swing prices their way, at the expense of the vulnerable majority. Palmer tweeted;

Lose your savings account password? Your fault. Fall victim to a scam? Your fault. Billionaires manipulating markets? They’re geniuses. This is the type of dangerous “free for all” capitalism cryptocurrency was, unfortunately, architecture to facilitate since its inception,

Another prominent figure that commented on Musk‘s ‘ploy’ is Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao. Despite being in a hard place himself for having bumped shoulders with regulatory authorities, Zhao stated:

I think Elon Musk wants to be a humorous guy…But he has to realize that his tweets do have the power to move markets.

Since breaking his Bitcoin alliance and supporting the meme coin DOGE on social media, Musk has enraged the Bitcoin community. Questions are arising on the bitcoin proponent turned DOGE-father and his trustworthiness as a member of the crypto community.

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