new York
CNN
—
Twitter’s traditional bird icon has been booted and replaced with an image of a Shiba Inu, an apparent nod to dogecoin, the joke cryptocurrency for which CEO Elon Musk is being sued.
Musk addressed the change Monday afternoon, Tweeter“as promised” above an image from a year-old conversation in which another user suggested that Musk “just buy Twitter” and “change the bird logo to doge.”
The doge logo appeared on the site two days after Musk asked a judge to dismiss a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support dogecoin, according to Reuters.
Lawyers for Musk and Tesla called the lawsuit filed by dogecoin investors a “fanciful work of fiction” because of Musk’s “harmless and often stupid tweets.”
It was unclear whether the logo change was permanent. Musk is known for using Twitter to troll both his fans and detractors.
The price of dogecoin, which is typically volatile, has risen more than 20% in the past 24 hours, to around 9 cents. It was trading at just under 8 cents Monday morning.
Dogecoin was created on December 6, 2013 by two software engineers – as a joke. The name is a nod to the “doge” meme that became popular a decade ago. Its mascot Shiba Inu imitates this meme: a dog surrounded by a bunch of Comic Sans text in broken English.