Tech mogul and world’s richest person Elon Musk continues voicing his support of meme-inspired crypto asset Dogecoin (DOGE), this time in a rather back-handed way.
In a Feb. 14 tweet, Musk said that he would support a sell-off by the largest Dogecoin holders. He wrote:
“If major Dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support. Too much concentration is the only real issue imo.”
The price of DogeCoin promptly tanked after Musk’s Feb. 14 tweet—dropping from about $0.63 to $0.49 over the next six hours, bottoming out around midnight according to CoinMarketCap. However, that coincided with a drop in many other altcoins, as well as bitcoin. And on Feb. 15 DogeCoin climbed back to $0.63 before slumping slightly to $0.59 in the past hour.
Musk is seemingly quite motivated to cause a major Dogecoin dump that would have major consequences for its price. Early this morning he went as far as to offer to “literally pay actual $ if [major Dogecoin holders] just void their accounts.”
What he didn’t do was say what he would do if they ignore him.
The founder and CEO of electric car manufacturer has enough capital to finance such an endeavor, given that—according to Forbes—his net worth is $177.2 billion as of press time, equivalent to nearly 20% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) market cap or 21.6 times the entire Dogecoin market cap. Musk’s capital and filterless communication style have caused many to worry that his influence on markets, and more recently on crypto assets, is too great.
As Modern Consensus reported earlier this month, Musk is believed to have previously caused Dogecoin to soar by 57% in 24 hours and left some alarmed. A report by Blockchain Research Lab found:
“Our results lead to the question under which conditions people in the public eye should comment on specific cryptocurrencies. If a single tweet can potentially lead to an increase of $111 billion in Bitcoin’s market capitalization, a different tweet could also wipe out a similar value.”
While some are alarmed at the idea that the next tweet published by Musk may have disastrous consequences for the market, so far his comments and actions had a rather positive impact on the crypto asset market. Earlier this month, his automaking firm Tesla bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin and started accepting it as a method of payment for cars. At the time, BTC skyrocketed printing its biggest-ever daily candle—$7,580—and reaching a new all-time high of over $48,000.