Elon Musk, DOGE market maker? Meme currency pumps as SNL skit looms

As a weeklong pump carries the meme cryptocurrency up 12% on the daily to $.33 and a staggering 43.8% higher on a 7-day basis, some are now speculating the rally could be fueled perhaps in part by a social media tease from billionaire Elon Musk that he’ll be participating in a Saturday Night Live sketch titled “The Dogefather.” 

Musk’s fascination with the digital currency dates back to last year, and he has recently only seemed to double-down on what may be an elaborate social media prank. While one of his companies, electric carmaker Tesla, added BTC to the balance sheet last year, the entrepreneur still seems to approach crypto generally with a touch of befuddlement — admitting that blockchain could be the future of human commerce, while also poking fun at its absurdities. 

“What would be the most ironic outcome? That the currency that was invented as a joke in fact becomes a real currency,” he said of Doge in an interview in February.

The market, however, takes his possibly tongue-in-cheek Tweets very seriously. While the correlation may be loose and complex, multiple studies have demonstrated that Musk tweeting about the currency tends to drive it higher. In January, the Blockchain Research Lab published a paper, “How Elon Musk’s Twitter activity moves cryptocurrency market,” that found six instances of Musk’s social media activity propelling DOGE higher.

Likewise, an analysis from Protos found that four of his tweets had a double-digit percentile impact on DOGE’s price (his tweets about Bitcoin and Ethereum may also move those markets, but DOGE’s lower marketcap makes it easier to pump). DOGE is notably susceptible to buzz, with social media volume — especially positive sentiment social media volume during American daytime hours — consistently driving the currency higher. Whether or not a sketch on Saturday Night Live will have a similar effect remains to be seen. The show played a music-heavy explainer on nonfungible tokens in March, though NFT prices may have retreated in a ‘silent crash’ since then.