With Trump reclaiming the White House, tech billionaire Elon Musk will almost certainly play a pivotal role in this upcoming administration. As the crypto market rallies on the news, one of the tokens that has benefited the most is Musk’s favorite crypto, Dogecoin, which soared 24% as the Republican candidate narrowed in on victory.
At his victory celebration in West Palm Beach, Trump spent four minutes of his 26-minute speech praising Musk, calling him a “special guy” and a “new star.”
“He’s a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses. We don’t have that many of them,” President-elect Trump said.
The Shiba Ina-themed memecoin — often associated with Musk— surged in the early morning hours on Wednesday, trading hands at $0.20, the highest since April. It settled around $0.19 on Thursday—a huge leap from a year ago when Dogecoin was scuffling as low as $0.07.
Having been a vocal supporter of the Republican candidate, donating over $118 million to his campaign and appearing at many of his rallies sporting a “dark MAGA” hat, Musk will be one of Trump’s strongest allies.
Dogecoin enthusiasts view Trump’s victory as a major win for the memecoin as it means there is likely to be more news about Musk and his proposed Department of Government Efficiency, whose DOGE acronym is an obvious nod to the coin.
Trump said on the campaign trail that he would put Musk in charge of the proposed new DOGE department, which would purportedly oversee government spending and eliminate “fraud and improper payments.”
When asked about the department at a town hall campaign event in Pennsylvania, Musk responded, “Yeah, D.O.G.E,” causing it to surge 15%.
Dogecoin is up 157% in the last year after Musk threw his fortune and influence behind Trump following his attempted assassination in July. In the days following Musk’s endorsement of Trump on X, Dogecoin surged 24%.
Musk has a long history of influencing the price of Dogecoin. In May 2021, following multiple endorsements from the billionaire including an SNL skit where he called himself “dogefather,” the coin’s market cap reached an all-time high of $88 billion.
His promotion of the coin led to a class action lawsuit in which he was accused of a pump-and-dump scheme to inflate the memecoin’s price. However, the lawsuit was thrown out in August.
Dogecoin is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $28 billion.