Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and former CEO of Twitter, recently introduced his Shiba Inu dog, Floki, as the new CEO of Twitter. In a tweet accompanied by a photo of the pup wearing a black T-shirt with the word “CEO” emblazoned on it, Musk hailed Floki as an “amazing” replacement for the former CEO, whom he had fired. The photo prompted humorous reactions on Twitter, with one user suggesting that Floki was the only one “crazy enough” to take the job.
Musk had fired the former CEO, Parag Agrawal, and subsequently sacked two other executives after acquiring the company for $44 billion. He then laid off nearly half of Twitter’s workforce. In December 2022, he announced his intention to resign as CEO as soon as he found someone “foolish enough” to take the job.
Floki, meanwhile, has seen a 41% increase in value in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The value of the Floki Inu DAO token rallied almost 100% in January after the group passed a governance resolution to do a $100 million token burn. This followed a report in late January that Twitter was designing a system to permit crypto payments, which sent the meme coin Dogecoin soaring.
While other canine coins like Shiba Inu and BONK have posted gains of 40% and 533%, respectively, Dogecoin is down 2% in the last three months. However, some analysts have cautioned that outsized gains in meme coins like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin have historically been the first sign of a market-wide sell-off.
Despite the market’s recent recovery from the crypto winter induced by FTX, it remains to be seen whether the gains in meme coins are sustainable or merely a prelude to a wider sell-off.
