What happens when a joke has gone too far, so as to not be a joke anymore. A joke that has been adopted by some of the most important people in the world.
This was the tale recently of a crypto joke involving Dogecoin that ended up being on Saturday Night Live (SNL). DOGE fans were initially thrilled as soon as news broke that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and one of DOGE’s most important ambassadors would be hosting Saturday Night Live.
In the days leading up to his SNL appearance, Musk’s views on Dogecoin had been garnering tons of media attention. He shared jokes about it on Twitter, even in interviews.
Fast forward to Saturday, May 8th. The day had arrived and the anticipation around Musk’s appearance was killing both DOGE fans and haters of the coin. There was a fever pitch energy around what Musk would say on Saturday Night Live. Would he say something good? Would he make a sarcastic comment about it? What would be the outcome of his remarks?
Well, in ensuing days it led to a roller coaster ride for Dogecoin. The show started and Dogecoin was at $0.65. The momentum was there and everyone heard the opening SNL line that kicked it all off.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk!”
It was now time time for Elon. The spotlight was squarely directed towards him, on arguably one of the biggest comedy episodes in history.
He began to do his monologue, a quite sincere one where he revealed among other things that he suffers from Asperger’s. His mother, Maye Musk, was in the audience, a nice touch given that Mother’s Day was on that Sunday. After a minute of interaction between the two, Maye wishes him good luck and tells him that she hopes his gift was not Dogecoin. To which Elon replies in no uncertain terms that that would be her gift.
So far, the price of DOGE had not moved too much, but now things were starting to change. Maybe people were expecting a lot more, but the price started to tank.
What would happen next?
People were expecting to hear more about DOGE from Elon. Little did they know that Elon had something else on his mind.
Now it was time for the SNL “Weekend Update” where Michael Che and Colin Jost invited a financial expert to talk about the recent crypto boom. Musk was the character Lloyd Ostertag in this skit.
At that point, the price of DOGE was the lowest it had been during the episode — $0.50. But as soon as they introduced Lloyd and he asked to be called “the Dogefather”, the price started to pick up a bit.
Both Che and Jost then began asking questions about crypto and specifically about Dogecoin. “What exactly is Dogecoin?” they repeated several times. Elon, or Lloyd, as you want to call him, deflected that question as if his life depended on it. Until he said something that closed it all.
He said Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money. Che asked him if it was a hustle which led Musk to respond that it was.
So was Elon’s comment behind Dogecoin’s sudden drop? Well, here is the scoop.
As soon as he said “Yeah, it is a hussle”, the price went up to $0.55, staying close to that mark until the end of the episode. Some folks were going crazy. Others were expecting more.
Then there were those who opined that Elon was just a troll. But only one thing was certain: DOGE price was tanking. On Sunday morning, the price went down to $0.43.
Was Elon solely behind Dogecoin’s sudden drop? Of course he wasn’t as there were many other elements that were a part of this. In a night where we heard pithy statements like “To the moon!”, “Dogefather”, and “it’s a hustle”, Elon arguably was the star — not Dogecoin’s price.
Elon is a powerful man and no doubt his words impacted the market. But to think that Elon was responsible for the downfall of Dogecoin is simply to be biased against him.
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