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Dogecoin dragged as Musk tells big holders of meme coin he will support stash sales

Published: 07:21 15 Feb 2021 EST

Tesla Inc - Dogecoin dragged as Musk tells big holders to sell ‘meme coin’ stashes

Meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin was on the slide on Monday after Tesla Inc’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) billionaire boss Elon Musk once again took to Twitter to air his thoughts on the digital coin.

While Musk has previously supported the crypto, which has helped boost its price in recent weeks, on Sunday he tweeted that he would give major holders of Dogecoin “full support” if they decided to sell most of their holdings, saying “too much concentration is the only real issue”.

READ: Dogecoin value surges following Musk intervention

“I will literally pay actual $ if they joust void their accounts”, Musk said in a follow-up tweet on Monday morning, with prices of Dogecoin sliding 5.3% to US$0.059 just before midday in London.

Developed by an IBM and Adobe software engineer as a joke and introduced in 2013, Dogecoin has since amassed a large following among those in the crypto space, establishing itself as one of the more famous ‘altcoins’. As of February 15, 2021, it carries a market cap of around US$7.7bn.

The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of around US$0.083 last week following another intervention by Musk on Twitter, who issued a flurry of cryptic tweets implied to be praising Dogecoin.

READ: Tesla’s backing of Bitcoin boosts share prices of existing investors

The Tesla boss has also not shied away from putting his, or at least the company’s, money where his mouth is when it comes to crypto, with Tesla unveiling a US$1.5bn investment in Bitcoin last week.

Despite the recent pullback, the value of Dogecoin is still a whopping 1,934% higher than its price this time this year, meaning those with a US$100 investment in the altcoin a year ago would be sitting on just over US$2,030 today.

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