$3.5 Billion Poured Into a Frog, Leaving Shiba Inu in the Dust? Elon Musk Just Did the Unthinkable

In a week dominated by economic whiplash and political recalibrations, one man — as usual — managed to hijack the spotlight with a single tweet. Elon Musk, tech billionaire and senior advisor to President Donald Trump, once again demonstrated his immense sway over digital markets when he posted a meme featuring PEPE the Frog dressed as an American superhero.

Within minutes, the price of PEPE Coin surged, the crypto market ignited, and Dogecoin — the long-standing king of meme coins — was left trailing in its wake.

On April 9, 2025, just hours after President Trump made a surprise announcement suspending all “retaliatory tariffs” — with the notable exception of China — the internet lit up. The 90-day pause was hailed as a temporary economic reprieve, and markets responded accordingly. Wall Street rallied, major tech stocks ticked upward, and crypto traders began pouring into digital assets like it was 2021 again.

But nothing sparked more intrigue and investment than Musk’s carefully timed tweet.

Appearing on X (formerly Twitter), Musk shared an image of Pepe the Frog, not in his usual meme form, but reimagined as a caped American hero. The caption was minimal — a wink emoji — yet the impact was seismic.

Within an hour of that post, PEPE was trading at $0.056998, a 15% jump over the previous 24 hours. Kraken’s price feed showed a clear upward trajectory, marking a major rebound after a slump caused by Trump’s earlier “Liberation Day” tariff announcements.

It wasn't just PEPE that felt the Musk Effect. The broader crypto market experienced a wave of renewed enthusiasm. From Bitcoin to Fartcoin, digital assets across the board began to recover. But it was the meme coin category — often dismissed by traditional financiers as internet-fueled nonsense — that outpaced every other asset class.

According to data compiled within 24 hours of the tweet, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization ballooned by 4.9% to $2.7 trillion. The meme coin sector alone surged 7.6%, increasing its total valuation to $48 billion. A staggering $3.5 billion of that growth has been attributed directly to PEPE and other Musk-favored tokens.

Dogecoin, the original meme coin darling, showed signs of recovery, trading at $0.1598. But the former king of the meme market struggled to keep pace with the electrified momentum behind PEPE. Notably, Dogecoin’s ticker — DOGE — now shares its acronym with the Department of Government Efficiency, a bureaucratic agency recently rebranded and reportedly headed informally by none other than Elon Musk himself.

Whether coincidence or cosmic trolling, the overlap has amused traders and added a layer of satire to an already surreal market narrative. Still, Dogecoin’s market momentum has been relatively subdued.

In contrast, PEPE has captured not just investor attention but a surge of meme-fueled optimism across platforms like Reddit’s r/CryptoCurrency and X’s finance verticals.

This isn’t the first time Musk has flipped the crypto world on its head with a meme. His history of influencing markets — whether via tweets, emojis, or late-night joke posts — is now a known financial phenomenon.

From Dogecoin endorsements during Saturday Night Live appearances to posting AI-generated memes that tanked Bitcoin, Musk’s influence sits somewhere between cultural clout and economic disruption.

But the PEPE rally feels different.

This time, it came at the crossroads of major geopolitical strategy and economic reform. Musk reportedly lobbied President Trump behind closed doors to reverse tariff escalations that had chilled global investor sentiment. While the tariffs on China remained, the broader pause appeared to be a nod to both economic advisors and perhaps Musk’s own political-economic forecasts.

The tweet that followed wasn’t random. It was loaded. Dressed as a patriotic savior, PEPE symbolized more than just a coin — it became an internet symbol of economic hope, a digital underdog rising from the ashes of regulatory uncertainty.

The Musk-induced wave wasn’t limited to just PEPE. Other meme coins enjoyed the ride:

• Shiba Inu (SHIB) traded at $0.00001187, showing slight gains.

• Fartcoin, the lesser-known but comically named meme token, surged 30% in 24 hours to reach $0.7295, its highest in a month.

• TRUMP Coin, the official meme token associated with the president, recovered to $8.10, though it remains more than 90% below its all-time high of $75.35 set before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

What’s notable here isn’t just price movement, but momentum. Traders are clearly hunting for the next meme coin rocket — and Musk, knowingly or not, is providing the launch codes.

As meme coins skyrocketed, traditional financial analysts were once again forced to re-evaluate their frameworks. “It’s becoming impossible to separate internet culture from financial trends,” said Helena Marquez, senior analyst at ChainVest Capital. “Every time Musk posts, it’s like the Federal Reserve announcing a surprise rate cut.”

While some institutional investors warn that meme coins remain volatile and fundamentally unsound, others are beginning to hedge by quietly acquiring positions in major meme assets, treating them as high-risk, high-reward instruments in diversified portfolios.

“It's no longer a joke. Meme coins are speculative assets with real short-term impact,” noted crypto economist Alex Yamada.

There’s another dimension that makes this meme moment especially potent: politics.

Elon Musk’s increasingly public role in Trump’s administration — as unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tariff advisor, and now crypto cheerleader — marks a striking convergence of tech, policy, and market manipulation. Critics argue that no unelected individual should hold such sway, particularly when their public statements directly affect global markets.

Others see it as Musk simply playing the game better than anyone else. His blend of tech savviness, meme literacy, and political access has turned him into a hybrid figure — part celebrity, part economist, part shadow bureaucrat.

If this rally is any indication, meme coins may be entering a new phase. Once derided as financial parodies, they are now being used to reflect political mood, economic sentiment, and cultural shifts — all within real-time, decentralized marketplaces.

PEPE’s sudden surge could be a short-lived flash or the beginning of a sustained rally that challenges the dominance of Dogecoin for good. One thing is certain: as long as Elon Musk tweets, the market will listen.

And sometimes, a frog in a cape is all it takes to move billions.