Elon Musk Tweet Sparks Flurry of Twitter-Themed Dogecoin Tokens

A new class of Shiba Inu-inspired tokens was birthed on BNB Chain and Ethereum Tuesday following a related tweet by technology billionaire Elon Musk.

Names like “babyDogeTwitter,” “dogenaldtrump,” “spaceTwitterDoge,” and “elonDogeTwit,” populated the two blockchains after Musk tweeted an image of a Shiba Inu dog wearing a Twitter T-shirt in front of a classic Halloween pumpkin with the social media platform’s bird logo etched on the side of it.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield said in a tweet in Asian afternoon hours that over 67 of such tokens fell 90% in the hours following their issuance, with 45 tokens falling 100%. This cumulatively led to losses of thousands of dollars among investors who punted on the newly issued tokens in hopes of a long-term price appreciation.

Over 42 tokens were marked by PeckShield as honeypots, a term that describes illicit tokens that change permissions on unsuspecting users’ crypto wallets, with the goal of eventually transferring all their crypto tokens out of those wallets into one controlled by a scammer.

Musk’s tweet also sparked off a rally in dogecoin, which jumped over 14 cents to gain more than 23% in the past 24 hours. Floki Inu, another Shiba Inu-themed token, also surged by a similar figure, while Shiba Inu’s SHIB tokens jumped 8%.

Such irrational exuberance came amid a relatively flat crypto market, with bitcoin and ether rising nominally in the past 24 hours.

Musk has been a major supporter of DOGE, which has become a proxy for sentiment about him. The entrepreneur's statements about the token have also consistently influenced its price, as previously reported.

Dogecoin has been on a run ever since Musk confirmed his takeover of Twitter last week, with the token’s futures racking up over $90 in liquidations over the weekend in an unusual move. The DOGE price doubled in October, the best performance among the 150 digital assets in the CoinDesk Market Index.