Dogecoin (DOGE) briefly jumped as much as 10% during Asian trading hours on Monday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that he is not selling his crypto holdings, which includes DOGE.
- DOGE exchanged hands at $0.111 on 4:10 UTC amid a largely flat crypto market. It surged following Musk’s tweet at 4:11 UTC, where he said he will continue to hold DOGE, ether, and bitcoin, and reached as high as $0.122 at 4:17 UTC.
- The spike was likely driven by automated trading bots that track token mentions from popular accounts on social media sites like Twitter. Musk’s Twitter account, for instance, has a following of over 77.6 million.
- Prices of DOGE slumped to $0.113 from the morning spike at the time of writing.
- Musk has previously tweeted about DOGE on several occasions. In Feb. 2021, he posted a picture of a rocket next to the moon and followed that tweet with a one-word tweet that stated “Doge” – a play on the saying of “going to the moon,” a term for an asset-price surge.
- In May. 2021, Musk stated he was working with dogecoin developers to improve system efficiency, which sent DOGE prices flying by 22%.
- Musk’s Tesla started accepting DOGE payments on its merchandise store earlier this year, as reported. DOGE payments continue to remain active, with the “Giga Texas Belt Buckle” and other products priced in both U.S. dollars and DOGE.
