April Fools’ Day lasted longer than usual this year, as Dogecoin managed to spin a one-off joke into a real endorsement from Elon Musk. It all started on Monday when Dogecoin ran a joke election that asked its users to choose which high-profile figure they wanted to elect as Dogecoin’s new CEO.
The supposed candidates included Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and MetalPay CEO Marshall Hayner. However, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame won by a landslide. 54% of users voted for Musk as CEO, and Musk himself decided to play along with the joke.
CEO For a Day
Musk acknowledged the April Fools’ Day joke by changing his Twitter profile to read “CEO of Dogecoin,” and, later, “former CEO of Dogecoin.” None of this is true—Dogecoin has neither a CEO nor a company behind it—but Musk’s enthusiasm for the coin seems to be real. He even tweeted “dogecoin rulz” and stated that Dogecoin is his “fav cryptocurrency.”
In fact, Musk has been aware of Dogecoin for some time now. Last year, he asked Dogecoin’s creator to help him fight scammers on Twitter. Musk has also made it clear that he is a fan of other cryptocurrencies, as he called Bitcoin “better than paper money” in February. Musk’s activity this week may be a joke, but his enthusiasm seems to be genuine.
According to Bitcoinist, the humorous affair actually had a real effect on Dogecoin’s market value. Apparently, the price of DOGE rose by 30% over a 24-hour period. This means that Musk may have drawn significant attention to Dogecoin and prompted trading activity. However, other events, such as Dogecoin’s addition to Huobi, may have also affected the price.
Dogecoin’s Real Developers
Dogecoin isn’t about to get a CEO, but the owners of the Dogecoin Twitter account have made sure to give credit where it is due by retweeting an old comment from a Dogecoin developer. That tweet lists the various developers who make Dogecoin possible:
The Dogecoin Core Developers. @dogecoin_devs on twitter /r/dogecoindev on reddit #dogecoin-dev freenode IRC. Team consists of @langer_hans @JRossNicoll @michilumin @MSingularity and Patrick Lodder (not on twitter). We’ve been responsible and doing everything since April 8, 2014.
— MovableSingularity (@MSingularity) October 16, 2018
The work of those developers has formed a basis for notable projects, such as Dogethereum. It has also attracted projects like Blockchair, which helped fix a minor Dogecoin bug in February. Five years in, Dogecoin is receiving serious attention from developers—though the community still enjoys a joke now and then.
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