Dogecoin surges 11% after billionaire Elon Musk's tweet

Musk says cryptocurrency can be used to buy Tesla merchandise

Dogecoin’s price surged on Friday in the wake of new social media comments by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, who said that the cryptocurrency can now be used to buy Tesla “merchandise”.

The meme-inspired cryptocurrency jumped 11.25 percent over the last 24 hours and 20 percent in one week, according to Coinbase. As of Friday, the cryptocurrency was trading at $0.1909, still 74.2 percent below the all-time high of $0.74.

In its latest tweet, Musk said that “Tesla merch” is now “buyable with Dogecoin”, without elaborating any further. The post has so far generated close to 200,000 likes and 19,800 comments as of 4:42 pm.

This is not the first time the cryptocurrency has rallied after Musk made comments about Dogecoin. Last March, the Tesla CEO said he’s “working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency”, sending the digital currency to climb by 30 percent.

Dogecoin, which started as a joke in 2013, has been ranked by CoinMarketCap as one of the top ten digital coins by market value.

It was one of the few cryptos that registered gains on Friday. Bitcoin and Ethereum were down 3.63 percent and 4.15 percent, respectively, over the last 24 hours.