Even if it’s a joke, Musk has tapped into a mood that makes millions of people feel like insiders.
“Yeah, it’s a hustle.” And with that, Elon Musk as host of Saturday Night Live brought down the value of Dogecoin by 35% and cemented it firmly in the minds of millions more retail investors, forcing us all to wait and see whether such pessimism will be their final verdict. That’s because Doge isn’t just any financial asset, and Musk wasn’t just any host. He’s now the biggest booster of the world’s fifth-most valuable cryptocurrency, having talked up the coin over the past few months, including the announcement Sunday that it’ll be used to pay for a new moon mission launched by his SpaceX rocket company next year. The statement of intent reflects Musk’s generally more positive comments about a product founded in 2013 as a parody of Bitcoin. Asked in February whether he thought Dogecoin could be the next global currency, Musk responded: “I think it should be the will of the people.… What would be the most ironic outcome? That the currency that was invented as a joke in fact becomes the real currency.” This ironic hype culminated in SNL’s Weekend Update segment, where Musk played Lloyd Ostertag, a bow-tied financial expert who labeled himself “the Doge father.” Asked six times to explain Dogecoin, he answered in the vague cliches we’ve come to expect from crypto-boosters: It’s a digital currency; it’s the future of money; it’s unstoppable.
