It's 2021 all over again. Bitcoin may be up today, but the biggest winner is the original meme coin, Dogecoin. And the reason, it appears, is Elon Musk.

Over the last 24 hours, the price of Dogecoin has increased by nearly 12%, according to CoinGecko data. Its price now stands at $0.1264.

Over the past seven days, DOGE has jumped by nearly 18%, making it the best performing cryptocurrency out of the top 40 biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Billionaire entrepreneur Musk tweeted on Tuesday that "D.O.G.E  will fix it" in response to a Los Angeles Times article reporting that California officials had blocked his SpaceX company from launching more rockets from the state.

Musk was referring to a so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency—an idea floated by ex-President Donald Trump for a government efficiency commission that would be led by Musk if the Republican candidate wins next month's election.

But investors may have interpreted Musk's tweet as pumping Dogecoin, given his history with the coin, retweeting the billionaire and posting memes ahead of the current price jump. It's also not the first time he's made the apparent connection between the proposed agency name and the DOGE cryptocurrency and meme.

Dogecoin is the ninth biggest digital asset, with a market cap of $18.5 billion. Originally created as a joke by developers wanting to poke fun at the seriousness of Bitcoin, it became a somewhat more serious cryptocurrency itself during a surge in crypto prices between 2020 and 2021.

Part of the reason for that was Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk frequently posting memes about the coin on Twitter (now X), leading to a cult following—and price boom.

Meme coins are highly volatile tokens that are typically based on Internet memes, jokes, or world events. Most meme coins are ephemeral and only have a moment in the spotlight before shedding most of their substantial value.

But Dogecoin, while still down 83% from its peak 2021 price, has remained one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world with a fervent fan base. And it's the largest of all the meme coins.

DOGE developers exclusively told Decrypt in 2021 that they were briefly working with Musk on improving the cryptocurrency so that it could be accepted widely for payments.

It's unclear whether Musk still has ambitions of working with developers on DOGE, but that hasn't stopped the world's richest man from pumping the coin on his own social media network.

Edited by Andrew Hayward