Dogecoin Surges 35% After Twitter CEO Replaces Logo with Iconic Shiba Inu

Dogecoin (DOGE) has been making headlines in the cryptocurrency world as of late. The popular meme coin experienced a surge of over 35% after Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, replaced the social media platform's logo with the iconic Shiba Inu dog that represents Dogecoin. The price of DOGE reached as high as $0.1046, which was last seen in December 2021, according to CoinDesk data.

Recent data from Coinglass shows that Dogecoin futures saw a total of $26 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours. Both longs and shorts were impacted, with longs experiencing $10 million in liquidations and shorts facing $13 million in losses. Traders on the crypto exchange OKX were the most affected, losing $12 million on Dogecoin futures positions. The open interest, or the number of unsettled futures contracts, for Dogecoin futures reached over $580 million.

Despite the recent surge, Dogecoin saw a 5% drop in value over the day, as the wider crypto market remained relatively steady. However, Dogecoin is still up 5.7% for the week, boosted by Twitter CEO Elon Musk's recent actions. Musk recently motioned a U.S. judge to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit accusing him of running a racketeering scheme to support Dogecoin. The lawsuit, which was filed in June 2022, also targets Tesla and the Dogecoin Foundation.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs claimed that Dogecoin is a security, however, Musk’s lawyer argues that the plaintiffs failed to plead any material misrepresentation or omission. The motion to dismiss the lawsuit states that the plaintiffs didn't explain how statements like "Dogecoin Rulz" or "No highs, no lows, only Doge" are false or misleading, and that the basic facts about the speculative and risky nature of Dogecoin were well-known to any reasonable purchaser.

On the other hand, another popular meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) saw a 3.5% drop in value, as well as Solana (SOL) with a 3.6% drop in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) experienced a slight 0.4% drop in value, with a daily low of $27,661 and a rebound to $28,350 at the time of writing.

The recent surge in Dogecoin may have been influenced by Twitter's potential move to allow payments through its platform. In January, the Financial Times reported that Twitter was working on a system to permit payments, and Elon Musk has hinted that Dogecoin may offer better payment functionality than Bitcoin. At the time of writing, Dogecoin was up 25% in the past 24 hours.