Elon Musk is back tweeting about Dogecoin as price rises 50%

'I am become meme, destroyer of shorts': Musk fires off market-wrecking omens & random thoughts, ending brief Twitter absence
4 Feb, 2021 12:43

The temptations of Twitter were apparently too great for Elon Musk, who ended his short-lived hiatus on the platform with a series of characteristically zany messages.

The world's richest man returned to his virtual soap box around 48 hours after he announced on Tuesday that he would be practicing Twitter abstinence.

The social media relapse began innocently enough, with Musk retweeting a video of a SpaceX satellite launch - but he soon began flooding Twitter with memes and off-the-cuff remarks.

The businessman began the binge with a photograph of a rocket accelerating into outer space, tagging the picture with "Doge," the 'meme' cryptocoin that he has joked about repeatedly.

That comment led to even more outlandish posts. Dogecoin is the "people's crypto" and you don't need to be a "gigachad" to own some, Musk wrote, adding: "No highs, no lows, only Doge."

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"I am become meme, Destroyer of shorts," he joked, in what seems to be a less-apocalyptic rendition of Robert Oppenheimer's musings about the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945.

Musk's comments about Dogecoin and other financial assets have been attributed to huge market fluctuations. For example, after he added "#bitcoin" to his Twitter bio, the crypto shot up in value, reportedly liquidating $57 million in short positions in just ten minutes. Dogecoin, widely regarded as a 'joke' coin, also shot up in price after Musk began sharing memes about it.

But with great power comes great responsibility, and the billionaire has acknowledged that he should show more restraint. In a widely discussed talk that he gave on the invitation-only social media app Clubhouse on Sunday night, Musk conceded that he had to be "careful" about what he says, because his remarks can "affect the market." There was speculation that his market-shaking tweets may have played a role in his decision to take a break from the platform. Judging by his latest remarks, it appears he is no longer particularly concerned about sending markets into orbit - or about crushing short sellers.

The tweets were "just meant to be jokes," Musk said in an interview on the social media app Clubhouse, as cited by Newsweek.

"Arguably the most entertaining outcome and the most ironic outcome would be dogecoin becomes the currency of earth in the future," he said, stressing that "fate loves irony".

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