(Bloomberg) -- Dogecoin investors had a wild ride this weekend.
After hitting a record Saturday ahead of Elon Musk’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” the digital currency began to fall hours before the show began and continued to drop as he delivered his opening monologue. Dogecoin traders around the world were organizing watch parties for the broadcast featuring its most prominent booster.
Briefly rebounding after the billionaire’s called a “hustle” during “Weekend Update,” Dogecoin slid further before bouncing back a bit on Sunday. It traded at 55 cents as of 6:10 p.m. in New York, down 15% over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. The digital asset traded within a range of 43.2 cents to 66.7 cents in the past day.
During the show, Musk jumped into the character of a bow-tie-clad, bespectacled financial expert and was repeatedly quizzed about what Dogecoin actually is. After delivering textbook answers, he was asked whether the currency was just a hoax, to which he responded, “Yeah, it’s a hustle,” and howled, “to the moon!”
The rebound Sunday came on the heels of an announcement that SpaceX, Musk’s commercial rocket company, will launch a mission to the Moon in 2022 with a so-called cubesat -- a mini satellite used for space research -- from Geometric Energy Corp. that’s been paid for entirely in Dogecoin.
”We’re excited to launch DOGE-1 to the Moon!” Tom Ochinero, SpaceX’s vice president of commercial sales, said in a statement, echoing Musk’s tagline.
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as an internet meme in 2013, has surged more than 21,000% in the past year, according to CoinGecko.
Musk, 49, has been among its biggest boosters, along with Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons. Still, crypto volatility has prompted urgent warnings from central bankers -- as recently as Thursday -- that people buying in should be prepared to lose all of their money.
Musk’s Tesla Inc. announced in February that it had bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, and the head of the electric-car giant himself has spoken of the digital asset in favorable terms. He has a $183.9 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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