Because Elon Musk Tweets “Floki Has Arrived”, Floki Shiba And Super Floki Prices Soar
JAKARTA - An obscure, meme-inspired cryptocurrency suddenly skyrocketed in price after Elon Musk shared a photo of his new dog.
The Floki Inu coin hit an all-time high on Monday, September 12 after the tech billionaire tweeted a picture of a Shiba Inu puppy, alongside the caption "Floki has arrived".
The immediate spike through the 150 percent price was reflected in other alternative cryptocurrencies with similar names, including Floki Shiba and Super Floki.
According to the CoinMarketCap price index, despite the massive price increase, Floki Shiba and Super Floki, remain outside the list of the 2,000 most valuable cryptocurrencies.
Floki has arrived pic.twitter.com/2MiUKb91FT
— Name (@elonmusk) September 12, 2021
This isn't the first time a tweet from Musk has caused the crypto market to move, having previously helped to propel dogecoin to new record highs earlier this year during an appearance on Saturday Night Live.
It took inspiration from the Shiba Inu Doge meme and immediately gained attention for its fun-loving and philanthropic community that had sprung up around it.
A fan of the self-proclaimed meme, Musk also became interested and even bought some for his infant son X A-Xii so he could become a "toddler peddler".
He also insinuated that cryptocurrencies could become the internet's native currency, as well as potentially becoming the currency on Mars when human colonies are eventually established there.
“Sometimes I make jokes about dogecoin, but it was really meant to be a joke,” he said during a Q&A session on the Clubhouse app earlier this year.
"But fate loves irony... The most entertaining outcome is often the most likely and arguably the most entertaining outcome, and the most ironic outcome, is that Dogecoin becomes Earth's future currency,"
Musk is currently the second richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of around $200 billion.
Aside from stakes in SpaceX, Tesla and other companies, the only things he claims have significant value are bitcoin, Ethereum (ether) and dogecoin.