Elon Musk understands that "he who controls the memes, owns the Universe," and the eccentric entrepreneur has been generating and destroying a universe of riches quicker than you can say his youngest son's name, A-Xii, with one falling swoop, or in his case tweet.
He has perfected the use of online pop culture to keep the pulses of both serious and inexperienced investors racing. A quick glance at his Twitter account reveals a plethora of emoticons, memes, and GIFs – a language he speaks with ease, especially when contrasted to his tech CEO counterparts, all while causing real-world market shifts.
Musk recently tweeted a sad emoji and a meme referencing the musical band Linkin Park while discussing Bitcoin. As a result, the cryptocurrency's value dropped by 6.3 percent.
Musk tweeted a blue-hued picture of a dollar note with the face of a Shiba Inu, the Japanese dog species popularly linked with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, a few weeks ago. The query on the post was, "How much is that Doge in the window?"
According to media sources, Musk's tweet roughly quadrupled the price of Dogecoin. Dogecoin is represented by the face of a Shiba Inu, which became online famous as a meme and gave birth to broken English/Internet slang phrases like ‘Much Wow,' ‘Bedteim Story,’ and the term ‘Doge,' among others.
Then there was the time Musk sent a tweet with no words and yet caused a market ruckus. Three emojis, three raindrops, and a rocket appeared in this post, which was followed by an arrow pointing to the moon.
Investors interpreted this to mean Musk wanted the price of an adult-themed cryptocurrency (delicately symbolized by the first two emojis) to skyrocket. Following Musk's post, the price of the cryptocurrency increased by over 400%.
Musk has been using memes more regularly since 2018, and by 2021, he plans to ramp it up much further. “A picture is worth a thousand words, and a meme may be worth 10,000…”. During a conversation on the social network Clubhouse earlier this year, he said, "It's a complicated image with a lot of significance in it."
In 2021, Musk began tweeting about cryptocurrency daily. He tweeted that Tesla will take Bitcoin as payment, but subsequently changed his mind after learning that mining Bitcoins is inefficient and harmful to the environment.
He is now a big supporter of Dogecoin, and he just tweeted that he bought some for his youngest kid (nicknamed X).
Musk's first tweets on Dogecoin were in 2019 when he shared a meme of a Shiba Inu smoking a cigarette with the caption, "Dogecoin rulz."
He has been increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies this year, weaving references to them into other parts of his life. For example, when he previewed his debut on Saturday Night live with the tweet "The Dogefather." May 8th, SNL.”
He used a Lion King joke in another tweet before the SNL broadcast to suggest he was presenting Dogecoin to the world.
The tweets fueled anticipation that Musk would make a major announcement regarding Dogecoin on Saturday Night Live, causing the cryptocurrency's market value to skyrocket by billions of dollars.
However, it plummeted by as much as 40% after Musk made a joke about the currency on the show and even called trading the coin a "hustle" — an attempt to make money by manipulating trading, especially since Dogecoin has no intrinsic value other than the value of being backed by famous people like Musk.
