• by Colin Kirkland , April 3, 2023

Yes, Twitter's logo is currently a Shiba Inu -- the dog breed and iconic face of meme-inspired blockchain and cryptocurrency Dogecoin, of which Twitter's prankster CEO Elon Musk has publicly promoted in past years.

The sudden logo change made headlines Monday due to the ongoing unpredictability and volatility of the popular microblogging platform, but more so because of the simultaneous price jump of Dogecoin, which skyrocketed as soon as that little pup hit Twitter's top left corner.

The value of Dogecoin is now at an astounding $12.4 billion, which calls to mind Musk's ongoing $258 million racketeering lawsuit that alleges he operated a pyramid scheme to promote the cryptocurrency.

After Musk's lawyers called the lawsuit “a fanciful work of fiction” and deemed Dogecoin “a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion” on Friday, the coin's price jumped 10%.

Replacing Twitter's classic blue bird with a Shiba Inu aligns with Musk's typical sophomoric humor and risky antics.

Some Twitter users believe it's simply the result of a badly timed April Fools joke: “I can only assume this was supposed to be an April Fools joke that took 3 days to roll out because no one knows how the site works anymore,” tweeted @win98tech.

The logo swap is reminiscent of a few impactful Musk tweets, like the one in 2018 -- “am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” -- which landed him with a major settlement and the loss of the chairman position of the company's board of directors. Or another tweet in 2020 –– “Tesla stock price is too high imo” -- that eradicated $14 billion off Tesla's overall value.

Musk has publicly backed Dogecoin since 2019 and included it as one of the 30 searchable tokens Twitter provided stock prices for in its “$Cashtags” feature. Dogecoin also saw a brief 24-hour spike in January when Musk tweeted about the possibility of expanding in-app payments to cryptocurrencies, but then dipped in value the next day.