Nearly 24 hours after Twitter swapped out its blue bird logo for a poorly cropped image of a dog meme made famous by cryptocurrency, the company’s billionaire owner Elon Musk has yet to offer any explanation or justification for the move. change.
On Monday US time, users noticed that the blue bird logo on Twitter’s homepage and loading screen had been replaced with the shiba inu image associated with the Dogecoin memecoin cryptocurrency. For hours, neither Twitter nor Musk acknowledged the change.
Adding to the confusion was a seemingly unrelated bug that appeared at the same time, one of a growing number in the Twitter user interface, that removed the ability to tell which tweets had been retweeted on your timeline.
In typical Musk fashion, he eventually tweeted a meme noting the change, and followed up with the closest explanation he’s offered: a callback to a joke a follower made in March 2022 suggesting that he should buy Twitter and replace the logo with Doge.
The official Dogecoin account tweeted in response: “Very current. Wow. Lots of currency. How much money. So Crypto.” An email requesting comment from Twitter’s press office received only the automated response, a single poop emoji, which has sufficed for Twitter’s PR operation since late March.
Some users speculated that it was meant to be an April Fool’s Day prank that the company failed to introduce in time on April 1.
Others wondered if it was an effort to flood news of a court case against Musk. The change came just days after Musk asked a US court to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit brought against him by Dogecoin investors over an alleged pyramid scheme.
Reuters reported in June last year According to the complaint, the plaintiffs claim that Musk knew that since 2019 the cryptocurrency had no value, but promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading.
“Musk used his pedestal as the world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin pyramid scheme for profit, exposure and amusement,” the complaint reported.
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The plaintiffs reportedly complained that the Dogecoin selloff began when Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live and referred to Dogecoin as a “hustle” in one segment.
Lawyers for Musk and Tesla have called the lawsuit’s allegations a “fanciful work of fiction” about Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about Dogecoin.
Dogecoin’s value jumped last year after Musk announced that you could buy Tesla merchandise using it.
In the Twitter logo change, Dogecoin’s value jumped from $0.079 to $0.094, the highest value the coin has had since November of last year.
Twitter is now worth less than $20 billion, according to a leaked internal memo, less than half of what Musk paid for it six months ago. Despite promising to remove legacy blue ticks for verified users as of April 1, the site has so far only removed the tick from the main New York Times Twitter account.
