Elon Musk's championing of dogecoin made him the token's 'community-appointed CEO' as early as 2019, Mike Novogratz' Galaxy Digital says

• Research from Mike Novogratz' Galaxy Digital traced Musk's early dogecoin endorsements.
• The Tesla billionaire was appointed Dogecoin "CEO" in April 2019 after winning a community vote.
• Novogratz admitted he had been too bearish on dogecoin as his firm said it shouldn't be ignored.

Billionaire Elon Musk was appointed chief of the Dogecoin community after he tweeted that the meme coin was his favorite cryptocurrency back in April 2019, a research report published on Tuesday by Mike Novogratz' Galaxy Digital showed.

Musk had replied to a post from the Dogecoin Twitter account calling for "someone who can lead us into the future." The post included a poll to vote for candidates including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Litecoin creator Satoshi Lee, Metal Pay co-founder Marshall Hayner, and the Tesla boss.

"He would continue to post several more times about Dogecoin that day, eventually being granted the role of CEO," Galaxy's researchers Alex Thorn and Karim Kelmy wrote of Musk.

The Dogecoin Twitter handle tweeted "Looks like you're the CEO now @elonmusk," to which the billionaire replied "uh oh."

Musk's heavy dogecoin endorsements in 2020 caused a surge in its price, propelling rapid and widespread retail investor adoption. A chart depicting price increases corresponding to Musk's tweets is shown below:

Dogecoin is up more than 9,500% so far in 2021 and currently carries a market cap of $85 billion. That makes it worth more than companies like Ford, DoorDash, Roku, and Marriott. It was last trading 38% higher on the day at $0.66 per coin.

Data from analytics firm Semrush shows online searches for dogecoin in the US spiked 3,603% in the first quarter of 2021 from the fourth-quarter last year. Meanwhile, site visits to Dogecoin.com in the US increased by 1,178% in the first quarter compared to the final quarter of 2020.

Galaxy Digital says that while there is no grand vision for the meme currency and there aren't any serious long-term use-cases supporting its narrative, it does have "remarkably strong fundamentals."

Billionaire investor Mike Novogratz has previously slammed dogecoin, but walked back his remarks on Tuesday by saying he had been too bearish.

"We don't expect dogecoin to become the world's most valuable cryptocurrency any time soon, but DOGE should not be ignored," his firm's research report said.