Volatile digital asset dogecoin is giving up some of the gains it accrued in the runup to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter
Musk has championed the coin, sometimes seemingly tongue-in-cheek, and it is now the eighth-largest cryptocurrency, boosted in part by speculation that the billionaire would incorporate it into a Twitter payments system. But after Platformer said on Thursday that work on the wallet has been suspended, dogecoin has dropped about 3% to 12.59 cents at mid-morning on Friday from 13 cents on Thursday afternoon. It crested above 14 cents earlier this week.
Twitter did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment on the proposed crypto wallet plan.
Dogecoin’s
Conceived as a gag, Dogecoin has climbed in the crypto valuation rankings to surpass alt-coins like solana, cardano and polygon, and it is now worth $17.4 billion.
Interest was fanned when court documents revealed text messages in which Musk indicated his intent to accept dogecoin on Twitter and his plans for a blockchain-based version of Twitter.
But Musk’s commitment to adding payment features to Twitter is not a sure thing. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said he discussed participating in Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, but split because of different visions each billionaire had for the company.
Bankman-Fried said he was looking to add decentralized technology into Twitter, connecting users’ crypto wallets with their profiles in the hopes of creating a mega-app like WeChat or Weibo, but eventually decided that he and Musk were on different pages.
“My sense was that that wasn’t exactly that Elon was shooting for,” he told attendees for Forbes’ inaugural Iconoclast Summit on Thursday. “He was going for something less payment-oriented.”