Bitcoin has soared over the last few days, taking a sleeping and stagnating market off guard and sending the bitcoin price higher by an eye-watering 27% and back above $5,000 per bitcoin for the first time this year.
The bitcoin price, which has been trapped in a downward trend for the last few months following a sudden sell-off in early November, exploded out the gates on Tuesday after slowly gathering pace throughout March—confirming much speculative data that a bitcoin bull run was imminent.
Now, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has surprised bitcoin and cryptocurrency watchers by saying that the meme-based dogecoin is his "fav" cryptocurrency, even ahead of original cryptocurrency bitcoin, which he's heaped praise on previously.
Musk, who has become known for his meme-ing Twitter account while running three major U.S. technology and engineering companies, was responding to (another) tongue-in-cheek Twitter poll that found him to be the favorite to take on the mantle of dogecoin CEO, with 49% of the vote.
Musk beat off competition from ethereum co-founder and widely respected crypto developer Vitalik Buterin, litecoin founder Charlie Lee, and Marshall Hayner, the chief executive of bitcoin and cryptocurrency blockchain payments processor Metal.
"Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency," Musk said, sending dogecoin up by some 27% over the last 24 hour trading period. "It’s pretty cool."
After the price boost, dogecoin is valued at a whopping $381 million.
Musk then changed his Twitter biography to say he's the "former CEO of dogecoin," and tweeted a doge meme with the caption "dogecoin rulz."
In an apparent dig at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who he has previously fallen foul of by tweeting potentially market-moving information about his electric car company Tesla, Musk tweeted "dogecoin value may vary."
Earlier this year the bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets were enlivened by comments from two of the most closely-watched figures in the tech world: Tesla's Musk and Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey.
The bitcoin price failed to rally following Musk's and Dorsey's light praise of bitcoin and how cryptocurrencies will change the future of money—despite crypto media celebrating wholeheartedly.
While Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have faintly suggested they see cryptocurrencies, and specifically bitcoin, as exciting new technologies that will likely change the world, neither seem particularly keen to lead the charge.
Musk, who last year got everyone fired up that he might be getting into bitcoin, this week called bitcoin’s structure "quite brilliant", adding "it bypasses currency controls … Paper money is going away. And crypto is a far better way to transfer values than a piece of paper, that’s for sure."
Speaking on the Ark Invest podcast in February, Musk said it's "very energy intensive to create bitcoin at this point" and it may not be "a good use of Tesla’s resources to get involved in crypto."
