Elon Musk has replaced the Twitter bird with a Shiba Inu

That Elon Musk likes to crack jokes is more than well-known by now, especially considering that most of the tweets he frantically posts from his account are memes. His latest prank, in particular, has had an invigorating effect on the cryptocurrency market, which does not seem exactly healthy after the Ethereum merger. For a few hours now, Twitter has replaced - only for the web version, not for the app - the traditional logo of the little blue bird with the "Doge", the Shiba Inu meme, which has become the symbol of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. A "prank" that shifted about $2 billion in value in the blink of an eye, and given its history, does not seem all that spontaneous. The first hints of this gesture date back to last March, even before the takeover, when Musk had sent a tweet asking his followers what changes they would like to see made to the app. Among the answers, one in particular proved prescient: «Buy Twitter and change the bird logo to Dogecoin». Yesterday, more than a year later, Musk's answer arrived: «As promised.» At the same time, the Tesla CEO posted a cartoon showing Dogecoin behind the wheel. When he is stopped by a police officer checking his identity, he explains to the officer, who looks in amazement at the "blue bird" on the document, that «it's an old photo».

Not everyone knows that there is currently a $258 billion lawsuit pending between Dogecoin and Musk, stemming from a 2021 skit on Saturday Night Live in which the Tesla CEO posed as a financial expert and called Dogecoins a scam. Some investors later denounced him, claiming that he intended to drive down the value of the cryptocurrency and then buy it in bulk at a low price, and now those same investors are accusing him of deliberately driving up the price of Dogecoin. Thank you to yesterday's gimmick, the cryptocurrency's value rose from about 7 cents to 9.5 cents in a matter of minutes and then settled at 9 cents, for a total increase in value of $2 billion. As Il Sole 24 Ore notes, the change comes just days after Twitter began changing its verification system, losing the "blue tick" for anyone who refuses to pay for a subscription, including America's most influential newspaper, the New York Times.