Elon Musk’s tweet about a shiba inu sends the dogecoin spinoff token surging 16%

An 11 year-old Shiba Inu in California, US on October 28, 2020.

Nathan Frandino/Reuters/File Photo

Dogecoin spinoff shiba inu spiked to its highest price in six weeks on Friday after Elon Musk tweeted about what he would name his shiba inu.

At 7:03 am ET, the Tesla CEO published a tweet to his 57 million followers saying, "My Shiba Inu will be named Floki."

Shiba inu rose to a high of $0.00000790 on CoinMarketCap at 7:23 a.m. ET, marking a 16% rise minutes after Musk tweeted.

It was last at $0.00000724 around 9:10 a.m. ET.

Shiba inu coin, which was founded less than a year ago, took inspiration from a more established meme currency, dogecoin – even branding itself as a "dogecoin killer." According to its website, shiba inu is an "experiment in decentralized community building."

The altcoin has become the 28th most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The new cryptocurrency came to the global spotlight when ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin donated 50 trillion shiba inu tokens worth around $1 billion at one point to a crypto-based COVID-19 relief fund for India in May – and burned 90% of his holdings just days later.

Musk has been known to tweet about various cryptocurrencies from dogecoin to bitcoin. His market-moving tweets have drawn the ire of regulators, investors, and executives.

Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO at Binance, said while Musk is free to say whatever he wants, a bit of forethought would help, Bloomberg reported.

"I think Elon wants to be a humorous guy but he has to realize that his tweets do have the power to move markets," Zhao, during the Qatar Economic Forum, said. "I would recommend him to a little be a little more careful but it's his freedom."

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