Musk's Shiba Inu image in the Twitter logo has caused Dogecoin to skyrocket over 30%

The price of niche cryptocurrency dogecoin spiked by over 30% on Monday after Twitter CEO Elon Musk replaced the blue bird on Twitter's website with a picture of a shiba inu, which represents the digital coin's logo.

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The change comes just days after attorneys for Twitter and Musk asked a federal judge in New York to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit from 2022 in which the billionaire was accused of manipulating the token's price and driving it up by more than 36,000%.

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After Musk's 133.5 million followers on Twitter were notified that his logo had been changed to a Shiba Inu, he shared a meme regarding the change with them. It appears that the dog is only visible to some users of Twitter, including those on the company's website.

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An inquiry to Twitter went unanswered.

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A few years ago, Musk began promoting dogecoin as one of the hottest cryptocurrencies. The token was created as a joke in 2013, so he tweets periodically about it, which predictably causes volatility each time he tweets about it. It has been estimated that Dogecoin, with a market cap of more than $13 billion as of the most recent CoinMarketCap.com report, is the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency.

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The Tesla Motors company announced in December 2021 that some merchandise will be available for purchase using dogecoin. Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, said on Twitter at the time that Tesla would "see how it goes" before making a decision.

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There was a 20% increase in the value of Dogecoin after that tweet was sent out. Dogecoin spiked to a 15% gain in value following Musk's announcement on Twitter in Jan. 2022 that dogecoin payments would be live on the platform.

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As for Tesla, it does have a number of digital assets on its books, including bitcoin, and still accepts dogecoin as payment for some of its products.

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"We haven't sold any of our Dogecoin," Musk said on a conference call last year when discussing the company's earnings. "It is still in our possession.”

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The lawyers for Musk described his public statements about the coin as "innocuous and often silly tweets," in a court filing released on Friday.

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But Musk's public endorsement of the coin goes beyond the mere social media messages he sends out on a regular basis. Tesla and the Boring Company, two of his companies, are named as defendants in the lawsuit that has been filed against him.

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As Musk has mentioned in the past, he holds dogecoins personally as well.

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In a recent tweet, Musk replied to one of the photos of himself with News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, by simply writing: “Dogecoin.”