Dogecoin jumps 17%, outperforms bitcoin, as supporters count on Musk to make Twitter more ‘doge-friendly’ – MarketWatch

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Dogecoin jumped more than 17% Monday following several reports that said Twitter is poised to accept Elon Musk’s $43 billion bid, with the potential for the two parties to finalize a deal as soon as Monday. 
The meme token DOGEUSD, -2.54% gained 14% over the past 24 hours, trading at around $0.15, according to CoinDesk data. Still, it is down about 80% from its all-time high in May 2021.
Bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.01% was trading 0.02% lower from 24 hours ago to around $39,407. Ether ETHUSD, +0.59% was trading at around $2,928, up 0.1%, according to CoinDesk data.
After Musk, chief executive at Tesla TSLA, -0.70%, made a bid on April 14 to buy the remainder of Twitter TWTR, +5.66% stock that he didn’t already own at $54.20 per share without saying how he would pay for it, the social media giant’s board had been expected to reject Musk’s offer, as it adopted a so-called “poison pill” plan. However, the company took a dramatic turn after Musk said last week he lined up $46.5 billion in financing, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Dogecoin supporters are hoping that Musk, the long-time backer for the Shiba Inu-themed token, could boost its usage after he takes over the social media platform.
On April 9, Musk sent out a series of tweets about Twitter Blue, the social media platform’s subscription services that provide special features such as allowing users to add their non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as their profile pictures.
In one of the tweets, Musk wrote, “maybe even an option to pay in Doge?”
Musk pushed Tesla to accept dogecoin as payment for some merchandise since January. In December, he said that dogecoin is better suited for transactions than bitcoin. “The transaction volume of [bitcoin] is low and the cost per transaction is high,” Musk told Time magazine at the time. “Fundamentally, bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency.” 
“The total transaction flow you can do with dogecoin, like transactions per day, has a much higher potential than bitcoin,” according to Musk. However, some bitcoin supporters pushed back, citing the Lightning Network, which aims to enable faster transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The social media company said on Monday it had accepted the Tesla chief executive’s takeover bid.

Frances Yue covers the cryptocurrency market as a Reporter for MarketWatch.

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