Shiba-Inu-inspired meme coin, Dogecoin, has spiked following the latest endorsement from billionaire Elon Musk.
On March 13, Elon Musk said that Dogecoin might be accepted as a payment method for Tesla “at some point.”
The comments came while Musk was addressing the public at a Tesla manufacturing plant in Berlin.
Musk was asked by an audience member if the electric vehicles can be bought using DOGE in the near future. “At some point, I think we should enable that,” he responded before adding, “Dogecoin to the moon.”
Elon Musk said he started endorsing DOGE after walking around his factories and talking to people on the production lines. “DOGE is the people’s crypto, so I will support it,” he said before adding that lots of rich people were supporting Bitcoin, but “If the people on the line want me to support DOGE, I’ll support DOGE.”
Moreover, it is not the first time the automaker has dabbled in Dogecoin. Tesla started accepting DOGE payments for company merchandise in January 2022.
Dogecoin Spikes Again
Dogecoin spiked 14% immediately after the comments went viral, surging from $0.166 to $0.189 during the Asian trading session on Thursday morning.
The doggy-themed token has now made a whopping 43% over the past fortnight as it rides on the coattails of Bitcoin, which hit an all-time high this week.
DOGE was trading at $0.184 at the time of writing but remains 75% down from its all-time high of $0.731 in May 2021.
It spent the first two months of this year trading around the $0.080 level before taking off in late February.
The meme coin is the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization which is a whopping $26 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Meme Coin Madness
Meme coins have been pumping recently, with Shiba Inu, PEPE, and BONK surging. PEPE is up 17% on the day, dogwifhat (WIF) has surged a ridiculous 35%, and BONK has made 17% over the past 24 hours.
The total market capitalization of all memecoins is $65.5 billion, which equates to around 23% of the entire crypto market, according to CoinGecko.
Total crypto market capitalization has reached $2.90 trillion as it nears all-time highs. Bitcoin hit a new peak of $73,700 during Thursday morning trading in Asia, but Ethereum has retreated below $4,000.
Binance Coin (BNB) and Solana (SOL) also performed well, with gains of 14% and 10% respectively.