New Delhi: Twitter owner Elon Musk booted out the social media platform’s iconic blue bird Monday, and replaced it with the image of a Shiba Inu, the logo of niche cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE).
Musk announced the change, tweeting “As promised” above the image of a year-old conversation with a user who suggested that Musk “just buy Twitter and “change the bird logo to a doge”. Musk had replied: “Haha that would be sickkk.”
As promised pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
Musk also tweeted an image of the Shiba Inu in a car, showing his driving licence to a police officer. The ID has the photo of the blue bird, to which the Doge meme says, “That’s an old photo”.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
The official Dogecoin account tweeted in response: “Very currency. Wow. Much Coin. How Money. So Crypto.”
Till Wednesday, however, the doge logo change had taken place only on the web version of the social media platform, while the mobile app continued to show the blue bird.
Incidentally, Musk is being sued by Dogecoin investors, who have accused him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency.
Last June, one plaintiff Keith Johnson accused Musk of racketeering for touting Dogecoin and driving up its price more than 36,000% over two years, and then letting it tumble.
On Friday – just two days before the logo change — Musk asked a US judge to throw out the $258 billion lawsuit, calling it a “fanciful work of fiction” over Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about Dogecoin.
“The lawyers said the investors never explained how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed, and that his statements such as ‘Dogecoin Rulz’ and ‘no highs, no lows, only Doge’ were too vague to support a fraud claim,” Reuters reported.
Dogecoin was created on 6 December, 2013, by two software engineers as a joke. The name is a nod to its logo — the “doge” meme — that became popular around that time. The meme – originally made famous in a Japanese blogpost since 2010 — consists of the Shiba Inu dog, foregrounded by multi-coloured text in the Comic Sans font and in broken English.
The dog behind the #Doge meme and #Dogecoin cryptocurrency is named Kabosu and she still lives with her owner Atsuko Sato @kabosumama in Sakura, Japan. Kabosu was a rescue dog and became a meme after Atsuko uploaded photos of Kabosu, including the one below, on her blog in 2010. pic.twitter.com/x5Kliw2DVf
— Dogecoin (@dogecoin) April 3, 2023
Musk has frequently promoted Doge, suggesting the meme coin may offer better payment functionality than bitcoin. A report said in January that Twitter was designing a system to permit payments through the social media platform. He has even referred to himself as “The Dogefather”.
Meanwhile, Doge’s shares surged more than 35% after Musk replaced the blue bird atop Twitter’s home page. On Monday, its market cap hovered just above $13 billion.
Netizens wondered whether the latest move by the Tesla and SpaceX boss was not a late April Fools gag.
Many welcomed the change – which is good news for the company as it navigates the recent backlash over switching to paid-for verification badges.
Musk, however, has not explained.
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