Lionel Laurent, Columnist

Musk-Driven Dogecoin Surge Is a Warning to Twitter

The social media platform needs to be more than an echo chamber for crypto hustles.

Will Elon Musk strap Dogecoin to Twitter?

Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
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The bursting of social media’s ad-funded bubble is creating big market waves. Meta Platforms Inc. is less valuable than Home Depot Inc., Snap Inc. is worth less than Deutsche Bank AG (which underwrote its IPO), and Twitter is now privately owned by Elon Musk after almost a decade of cumulative stock-market underperformance.

The depressing sight of Dogecoin jumping 100% in one week on hopes of a more cryptocurrency-oriented direction for Twitter, however, suggests we are a long way from a new model that might help humanity or that’s genuinely “decentralized,” ambitions Musk has expressed for his newly acquired platform. The token got another boost Tuesday after Musk tweeted a picture of a Shiba Inu wearing a Twitter t-shirt.