The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is no stranger to crypto.
Over the past year or so, he has made his interest in the crypto markets very clear, ranging from both cryptic tweets to actual investments.
In the first half of 2021, it seemed that he had the whole market wrapped around his finger.
Even subtle hints such as quietly changing his Twitter bio to ‘#bitcoin’ caused prices to skyrocket within the hour.
At the Bankless Times, we decided to find out just how impactful Elon Musk’s Twitter activity can be on the crypto markets.
We’ve mapped out his tweets against crypto charts and measured the impact on price directly after.
Read on to find out what we discovered.
Event 1 — 28 January 2021
Elon Musk posts a picture about Dogecoin.
Almost immediately after, immense buying volume came in and pushed the price of DOGE up nearly 300%.
Indeed, the market retraced shortly after but the impact of his tweet is clearly visible on the chart.
Event 2 — 29 January 2021
Elon Musk adds #bitcoin to his Twitter bio and makes a cryptic tweet.
Moments after the tweet was made, the price of Bitcoin jumped over 20% from around $32,000 to around $38,000 before retracing back hours later, likely due to profit-taking.
In the weeks that followed, the price of Bitcoin rallied to new highs on an almost daily basis.
Event 3 — 4 February 2021
Elon Musk makes another Dogecoin-related tweet.
Elon Musk makes a tweet about Dogecoin again, which creates a frenzy of speculation online about whether he’s made an investment in the project.
The price of DOGE jumped nearly 50% directly after the tweet was posted.
Event 4 — 28 April 2021
Elon Musk dubs himself ‘The Dogefather’ in Saturday Night Live promo tweet.
Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he will be appearing on the Saturday Night Live show on May 8 and dubbed himself ‘The Dogefather’
The prospect of Dogecoin being featured on mainstream media caused the price to surge again. This time, the price jumped over 36% directly after the tweet was made.
Notably, the price continued to rally up until the day of the show where it marked a peak in the price for the entire 2021 year.
Event 5 — 11 May 2021
Elon Musk conducts a Twitter poll as to whether Tesla should accept DOGE.
Days after his appearance on SNL, Elon Musk asked people on Twitter as to whether Tesla should accept Dogecoin as a payment method.
The poll received over 3 million votes with over 78% voting ‘yes’.
By this point, the impact of his tweets was still noticeable but was waning.
The price of Dogecoin jumped less than 20% in the moments after his tweet was made.
Event 6 — 1 July 2021
Elon Musk tweets some doge-related lyrics.
At this point, the price of Doge has fallen significantly since Elon appeared on SNL and the novelty of his Doge-themed tweets seem to be fading away.
The price of DOGE jumped by less than 10% after this tweet.
Event 7 — 14 December 2021
Elon Musk reveals plans to test out Doge payments for some Tesla merchandise.
By December of 2021, the wider crypto markets had declined significantly from their recent highs and the Doge charts were no different.
However, Elon injected some life back into the markets by announcing plans to integrate Doge as a payment method for Tesla merch.
The price jumped nearly 40% immediately after before profit-taking sent prices back down again.
Event 8 — 14 January 2022
Elon Musk confirms Dogecoin payments for Tesla merch is now live.
Elon Musk confirmed rumours that dogecoin payments for Tesla merch are now live and the markets reacted positively to the news.
Dogecoin jumped nearly 14% following the tweet before retracing back again.
Event 9 — 25 January 2022
Elon Musk says he will eat a Happy Meal on TV if McDonald’s accept Dogecoin
Elon’s latest Doge-related tweet caused quite a stir all over social media.
He directed a tweet at McDonalds stating that he would eat a Big Mac burger on TV if the fast food company would accept Dogecoin as payment.
The brazen proposition caused the price of Doge to shoot up around 10% before falling back down again.
Notably, the official McDonald’s Twitter account responded with ‘only if @tesla accepts grimacecoin’ in a playful manner, seemingly declining the proposal since that coin doesn’t officially exist.
Closing Thoughts
The impact of Elon Musk’s Twitter activity on the crypto markets is undeniable.
After every crypto-related tweet, there is an almost instantaneous reaction by the market, likely caused by trading bots who attempt to make some quick profits.
Dogecoin was the crypto that he tweeted about the most which unsurprisingly is the coin on which he had the biggest impact.
On average, we found that Elon’s doge-related tweets had a 58.52% positive impact on the price immediately after the tweet was posted.
Notably, however, this figure was significantly skewed by one of his first Doge tweets which caused prices to jump up by nearly 300%.
When that particular tweet is omitted from the results, the average price impact was found to be 24.99%, which is still significant but more representative.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the impact of his tweets seems to be waning.
At the start of 2021, his tweets had the power to shoot prices up nearly 300% in cryptocurrencies such as Doge.
However, his most recent tweets have barely had the same effect.
At one point, his tweets moved the markets by less than 14% which is in stark contrast to what was possible before.
Indeed, his favorite crypto to talk about is Dogecoin, despite his biggest publicly-known investment in the crypto world being in Bitcoin.
It remains to be seen whether Elon makes any other crypto investments but it certainly is an interesting topic to follow.
