Tesla stock fall sinks crypto token dogecoin
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Dogecoin's (DOGE-USD) price plummeted on Wednesday, its value closely aligned with the fate of Tesla (TSLA) boss Elon Musk.
Throughout November, dogecoin exhibited a price pump after Musk acquired Twitter (TWTR) on 27 October, rising to $0.14 (£0.12) from $0.07 less than one week after the purchase, according to data from CoinGecko.
This recent high is still a long way off the May 2021 peak of $0.73 amid Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Musk's leadership of Twitter has been called into doubt and hit by a salvo of complaints and controversy, including the reinstatement of former US president Donald Trump's Twitter account.
Dogecoin, which acts as a proxy sentiment indicator for the Tesla boss, lost 20% of its value in the past week, falling to $0.072, around the same price it was before Musk's purchase of the social media platform.
Fellow memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB-USD) fared better, up by 0.68% to $0.00000831 on Wednesday.
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On Sunday, Musk posted a poll from his own Twitter account asking followers if he should stay as the CEO of the company or step down.
He promised he would "abide by the results" of the poll, and after more than 17.5 million people participated, 57.5% voted in favour of his exit.
Musk tweeted: "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software and servers teams."
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022
Tesla shares sank 8% on Tuesday, reaching a new 52-week low of $137.
Critics have pointed to Musk's acquisition of Twitter as a distraction, highlighting that he sold $8.5bn of the electric carmaker’s stock in the three days after the Twitter board agreed to sell the company to him.
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But Musk said the sinking price is partly due to macroeconomic factors, although Tesla stock has underperformed compared to other automakers on the S&P 500 (^GSPC) since he announced the Twitter deal in April.
Major blue chip cryptocurrencies have suffered heavy losses over the week, with bitcoin (BTC-USD) down 5% to $16,877 in the last seven days.
Ethereum (ETH-USD) was down 8% to trade at $1,215.
