On April 3, without any advance warning, Elon Musk changed the iconic Twitter bird logo to a Shiba Inu dog. He then followed that up with a funny meme image of a Shiba Inu dog on Twitter. Of course, Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) backers took that as a prophetic sign, given that the Shiba Inu dog is the unofficial mascot of this cryptocurrency. As might be expected, the price of Dogecoin rallied more than 30% in the span of just three hours, and 24-hour trading volume hit a peak of $3.54 billion -- the highest point it had reached in the last 90 days.

There's just so much to unpack here. Was this a late April Fools' Day joke? Did Elon Musk specifically intend to send the price of Dogecoin soaring? We may never know the answers to these questions, but one thing is certain: Long-term investors should never buy a meme coin.

In the past, Elon Musk has endorsed Dogecoin with tweets, many of them featuring funny memes of the Shiba Inu dog. And, more times than not, these witty tweets have sent the price of Dogecoin upward. What could be better, the thinking goes, than to have one of the most famous billionaires on the planet openly showing support for a meme coin? So it's easy to see why many investors jumped at the latest opportunity to profit from Elon Musk's public support. 

Continue reading

Source Fool.com