The microblogging site Twitter has replaced its signature bird symbol with a doge meme.
The new Twitter logo which is displayed as a home button on the web version is the 'doge' meme of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. Twitter CEO Elon Musk also tweeted a caricature where the 'doge' meme (Shiba Inu) tells a cop that his driver's license has an old picture.
The Twitter CEO also shared the screenshot of the March 26, 2022, conversation between him and an anonymous account where the latter was asking to change the bird logo to "doge." Sharing this post on Twitter, Musk wrote, "As promised."
The doge image of a Shiba Inu is well-known as the logo of the Dogecoin blockchain and cryptocurrency, which was created as a joke in 2013 -- to mock other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
While Shiba Inu is a popular dog breed, the Shiba Inu token is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in August 2020 by an anonymous person or group known as "Ryoshi".
Incidentally, Dogecoin cryptocurrency value has skyrocketed after the change of the Twitter symbol.
The latest development comes after Elon Musk had asked a US judge on Friday to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
The lawyers for Musk and his electric car company Tesla Inc called the lawsuit by Dogecoin investors a "fanciful work of fiction" over Musk's "innocuous and often silly tweets" about Dogecoin.
The lawyers said the investors never explained how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed, and that his statements such as "Dogecoin Rulz" and "no highs, no lows, only Doge" were too vague to support a fraud claim."There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion," Musk's lawyers said.
Investors accused Musk, the world's second-richest person according to Forbes, of deliberately driving up Dogecoin's price more than 36,000% over two years and then letting it crash. They said this generated billions of dollars of profit at other Dogecoin investors' expense, even as Musk knew the currency lacked intrinsic value.
The $258 billion damages figure is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin's market value in the 13 months before the lawsuit was filed. Dogecoin Foundation, a nonprofit, is also a defendant and seeking the lawsuit's dismissal.
