Dogecoin retreated from a record earlier Saturday, declining during Elon Musk’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” where the billionaire jokingly called the digital asset “a hustle.”
The fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market value reached a record above 73 cents on Saturday before dropping as low as 51.4 cents during the show. It was down 23% over the past 24 hours to around 55.6 cents as of 12:56 p.m. in Hong Kong, according to pricing from CoinGecko.
Musk, who said he’s the first person with Asperger’s to host the show, was asked repeatedly during the “Weekend Update” segment to explain what Dogecoin is. After reciting multiple facts about the cryptocurrency in the character of a financial expert, he was asked if Dogecoin was a “hustle.” He responded, “yea, it’s a hustle.”
Musk, 49, is the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $183.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He had helped drive the coin to new heights on Friday and Saturday after tweeting a picture of himself and a Shiba Inu on the set of the iconic NBC show.
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke in 2013, has surged more than 20,000% in the past year, according to CoinGecko. Musk has been among its biggest boosters, along with Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons. Dogecoin traders around the world organized watch parties for the “SNL” episode.
An earlier Dogecoin reference came during the opening monologue where his mother, Maye Musk, joined him on stage. The author and model said she was excited about her Mother’s Day gift, and she hoped it’s not Dogecoin — to which he said, “it is.”
In the character of the financial expert, Musk also called Dogecoin “the future of currency, it’s an unstoppable financial vehicle that’s going to take over the world.”
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, retreated more than 1% to around $58,000 as the show continued. 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.
Cryptocurrencies are “promising, but please invest with caution,” Musk tweeted on Friday, linking to a video that showed him talking about the merits of crypto, particularly Dogecoin. That follows months of Twitter posts from Musk about the likes of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, almost all favorable.
Source: Bloomberg.com