Elon Musk, pet dog 'Floki' video sparks 29% surge

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a video of his pet dog 'Floki (FLOKI)', the related meme coin's price surged.

On the 20th (local time), according to Cointelegraph, Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter) the message "Floki is back on the job as CEO" along with an AI-generated video of a dog wearing a tie and glasses sitting at a desk saying "Numbers, numbers, numbers? Is this working? Yay".

After that post, the price of the Floki (FLOKI) token rose from 0.00006572 dollars to 0.00008469 dollars, an increase of about 28.8%. It later pulled back to 0.00007998 dollars, but still recorded a double-digit gain in one day.

CoinGecko said, "This surge shows Musk still exerts influence on the meme coin market," and analyzed that "meme coin investors in particular tend to respond to short-term demand centered on 'memes and humor'."

Musk has also directly influenced price movements of meme coins like Dogecoin in the past. Since 2021, there have been several cases where he led DOGE price increases through changes to the Dogecoin logo, social media posts, and broadcast remarks. In 2022 he was caught up in a class action lawsuit alleging Dogecoin price manipulation, but that suit was withdrawn last November.

Meanwhile, the meme coin market was heavily affected by the cryptocurrency market crashes on October 10 and 18. According to CoinMarketCap, on October 11 the total market capitalization of the meme coin market fell from 72 billion dollars to 44 billion dollars, dropping nearly 40% and giving back all gains from the past three months.