An El Salvador-based Bitcoin maxi says he took down 70% of the Dogecoin ($DOGE) network on Wednesday, using an old laptop and a publicly available exploit.

Bitcoin sidechain developer Andreas Kohl shared screenshots on X that suggest he crashed 442 of Dogecoin’s nodes, almost 69% of the entire network, using an old Thinkpad laptop and the ‘DogeReaper’ vulnerability.

‘DogeReaper’ allows an individual to crash any Dogecoin node remotely. The exploit was revealed publicly on December 4 by the Department Of DOGE Efficiency (not to be confused with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency).

Read more: Bitcoin Lightning bug could jam and steal millions of dollars

“Bitcoin Monk” Tobias Ruck and software developer Roqqit both discovered the vulnerability, which was then disclosed in secret to miners and crypto exchanges. A patch for the node was created but most of the nodes in the network failed to update to the new patch, resulting in the network ultimately being exploited. 

According to the Doge Efficiency account, a malicious actor could’ve “stopped the Dogecoin network for at least a few days, with no transactions or blocks,” rendering the price of DOGE “closer to $0 than to $1.”

The account also noted that Coinbase considered the severity of the Dogecoin node exploit as “low” and “informative.” According to Roqqit, “We never received confirmation that Coinbase updated to a non-vulnerable version of Dogecoin.”

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Members of the Taliban have been “making good money” trading memecoins, specifically Shib and Dogecoin, according to a recently-released documentary film.

On Sunday, X user and documentary filmmaker “Arab” posted a snippet of a two-part film in which he spends seven days with the Taliban. In the 37-second clip, Arab sits in a room of (presumably) Taliban members and asks one particularly elderly man “do you like memecoins?”

At this point, another man interjects, telling Arab that “they don’t know about that.” However, he goes on to explain that he is familiar with crypto and opens up with more details about his trading strategies and preferred coins.

“I’ve done Shib and these things,” he says, adding, “I made some good money in Shib and with Doge.”

However, he then clarifies that he “lost it back.”

“Talibros trading memecoins,” laughs an excited Arab before the man chimes in again with “buying high, selling low. That was my thing.”

Read more: US congressman Mike Collins goes from altcoins to memecoins

Arab then jokes to the camera, “If you rug-pulled, just know, you took it from this man here. And me”

Other clips from the film feature the same man claiming that women “cannot rule because they have less brain,” revealing the “truth behind 9/11,” explaining why the Taliban banned music, and attempting to recruit Arab (he seems open to the idea).

In the comments under the clip, Arab posted, “Someone run up $SHARIA coin,” before quickly following up with, “GUYS IM TROLLING DONT BUY $SHARIA COIN. I DO NOT CONDONE THIS.”

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President-elect Donald Trump is selling DOGE shirts after appointing billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as heads of the newly-coined Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short — a reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.

The rudimentary shirts are on sale for $28 on Trump’s official campaign site. Amidst an orange-washed background of Mars, Musk and Trump’s face are plastered below ‘D O G E’. Peeking over their shoulder is a little Shiba Inu, the official Dogecoin mascot.

Following the thinly-veiled announcement of the Department of Government Efficiency, $DOGE’s volume rose to $47 billion. However, its price and market cap remained relatively stable.

It was widely expected that Musk would be appointed to an advisory or cabinet role, which may explain why $DOGE price hasn’t continued to surge.

This is Musk’s latest attempt to shamelessly pump (and likely profit) from his favorite cryptocurrency. Protos has previously tracked Dogecoin’s price following Musk’s promotional posts on X, revealing that DOGE pumped up to 32% after he tweeted about the memecoin.

Read more: CHART: Dogecoin market cap now greater than 60% of S&P 500

The billionaire posted about the token 30 times on 22 different days, between May and November 2021 alone. Since then, Musk momentarily changed Twitter’s logo to the DOGE mascot, which led to a 30% price pump.

Dogecoin investors famously sued Musk for allegedly orchestrating these “publicity stunts” to pump and sell at a profit. However, Musk managed to get the lawsuit dismissed in late August.

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Amid bitcoin’s insane rally to historic highs, dogecoin ($DOGE) has doubled in price and now has a market cap greater than over 60% of the 503 stocks in the S&P500.

Dogecoin’s market cap is over $58 billion at press time. According to Stock Analysis, this ranks it 181st out of 503 stocks in the S&P 500 — above 64%.

It also places it above the Monster Beverage Corporation ($MNST at $54 billion), insurance behemoth The Allstate Corporation ($ALL at $52 billion), and energy giant American Electric Power ($AEP at $50 billion).

DOGE is also currently outperforming Nasdaq, Inc. ($NDAQ at $46 billion), the Ford Motor Company ($F at $45 billion), and gaming firm Electronic Arts ($EA at $42 billion).

Read more: Trump win sends Bitcoin price to all-time high — and boosts 8 key metrics

At its 24-hour peak, Dogecoin’s market cap reached $63.5 billion, which momentarily ranked it 165th in the S&P 500 — above 66% of its 503 stocks.

Just one week ago, Dogecoin’s market cap was 56% less at $25 billion.

Meanwhile, bitcoin made its largest daily gain in history yesterday — closing at over $8,300 above its opening price.

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While Elon Musk’s infatuation with satirical dog-themed crypto Dogecoin is well documented, the truth around his role in the project’s funding is less cut and dried.

On the one hand, American author Water Issacson’s Elon Musk biography discusses at length the controversial billionaire’s financial support for the project, while in a 2021 Decrypt article, Dogecoin Foundation director Ross Nicoll claims that it turned down his offer despite working closely with the Tesla founder since 2019.

Whatever the truth, Musk’s admiration for the project is clear for all to see. Indeed, he even spent much of his appearance on Saturday Night Live promoting it.

Not only that, Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office, was also listed on the advisory board of the Dogecoin Foundation (though Musk would later take to Twitter — now X — to deny that Birchall or himself had any association with it).

Read more: Insider trading lawsuit: Here’s how much Elon Musk pumped DOGE

However, despite Musk’s apparent support (financial or otherwise), Dogecoin’s development efforts have been slow. The core repository linked from the Dogecoin Foundation website shows that the last commit was almost three years ago, on May 18, 2021, and that was a template for people to submit bugs.

Most of the work for the next major release (1.21), announced in 2021, appears to have been completed but hasn’t been deployed. Other products have been updated more recently, including the ‘GigaWallet,’ which saw a commit today, the first since November. 

Jens Weichers, a director for the Dogecoin Foundation entities emphasized to Protos that there is no direct relationship between the Dogecoin Foundation and the core client implementation: “Dogecoin Core’s next major release is supposed to be 1.21. Dogecoin Core is a client and at this time the reference implementation. Several developers/maintainers of Core are members of the Foundation (and the Foundation has provided some funding to Core contributors and received some funding from the developer tipjar) but Core is not a project of the Foundation.”

The Dogecoin Foundation is suffering administrative problems with two of its entities, MADEUPNUMBERS LTD and MUCH WOW LTD, both listed as ‘Accounts overdue’ on Companies House.

MUCH WOW LTD is also the sole member of Dogecoin Foundation Australia, based on corporate records reviewed by Protos.

Despite all the attention recently paid to Musk and Dogecoin, the project itself appears to be slow to make substantial changes.

Protos has reached out to a director of MUCH WOW LTD and MADEUPNUMBERS LTD to obtain clarification on the current status of the Dogecoin Foundation and will update this piece if we hear back.

Update: January 9th, 2024 22:06 UTC: Jens Wiechers, a director for the Dogecoin Foundation entities, responded to Protos, notifying us that the Dogecoin Foundation: “had to switch accounting firms and then the US office of the second one was bought out leading to delays. I hope that we’ll be ready to submit UK and USA accounts by the end of this month.”

Update: January 10, 2024 15:08 UTC: Wiechers further clarified the relationship between the Dogecoin Foundation and the core client.

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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has agreed to hear a case involving Coinbase’s million-dollar Dogecoin (DOGE) sweepstakes that ran around the time that Elon Musk was re-promoting the meme coin.

The case, Coinbase v. Suski, centers on “whether, where parties enter into an arbitration agreement with a delegation clause, an arbitrator or a court should decide whether that arbitration agreement is narrowed by a later contract that is silent as to arbitration and delegation.”

In other words, SCOTUS justices will decide whether Coinbase users’ case against the exchange will stay in arbitration or escalate to court.

Coinbase claims that user disputes over the Dogecoin sweepstakes must go to arbitration, as outlined in its user agreement. A federal appeals court ruled otherwise, saying that the sweepstakes rules clearly stated that Californian courts had jurisdiction in case of a dispute. The appeals court reasoned that state-level sweepstakes regulations (to use courts to resolve disagreements) overpowered the user agreement (to use arbitration).

SCOTUS added the case to its docket on June 30, 2023, and assigned it docket number 23-3. Coinbase had previously requested a 30-day extension to review the decision made by the appeals court. Without the additional time, it would have had to submit a writ of certiorari by May 24, 2023.

Now that SCOTUS will hear the case, Coinbase has plenty of time to prepare.

Coinbase’s sweepstakes promised $1.2M in Dogecoin

In 2021, Coinbase held a giveaway with prizes worth up to $1.2 million denominated in Dogecoin. The firm’s legal argument hinges on the fact that users were required to sign up for an account and signed off on an agreement before entering the giveaway. However, the other side of the dispute — led by David Suski — says the giveaway itself had its own set of rules that should have overridden the user agreement.

The user agreement requires users to file any disputes with a private arbitration firm. Private arbitration has been advertised as a faster and cheaper way to settle disputes. Its supporters also say that it is a way to settle disputes without having to “air the dirty laundry.”

Read more: Coinbase tells SEC it no longer thinks crypto is the future of finance

Detractors of arbitration say that corporations typically try to force disputes into arbitration because there is no way to appeal if one side thinks the arbitrator erred. Second, some experts have also expressed concerns that arbitrators favor “frequent fliers” – parties like some corporations that frequently pay for arbitration services. Third, critics say that corporations force arbitration on matters that should proceed through courts, such as labor disputes, as a way to limit the monetary settlements and judgements from powerful judges.

Still, arbitration has its place. Some parties prefer arbitration for reduced legal costs, fewer formalities, faster scheduling, or expertise in specialized topics.

In summary, Coinbase’s desire to use arbitration to resolve a Dogecoin sweepstakes complaint will be decided by justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS has added the case to its docket and will choose the proper venue for resolving the disagreement: arbitration or court.

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When billionaire and Dogecoin evangelist Elon Musk changed Twitter’s logo to the doge mascot in April, no one was laughing but him. According to a group of investors suing Musk, it’s just another example of the world’s richest man manipulating the memecoin’s price to engage in insider trading.

In a proposed third amended complaint filed on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, investors say Musk sold about $124 million of dogecoin after Twitter’s logo change led to a 30% price jump. The court case, ongoing since last June, argues that Musk used social media posts, paid online influencers, a Saturday Night Live appearance, and other “publicity stunts” to pump doge and sell at a profit.

Musk was able to defraud investors through a “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading,” the latest filing read. The Tesla chief is accused of driving up dogecoin’s price by over 36,000% over two years and letting it crash.

At the end of 2021, Protos investigated just how much Musk had pumped various cryptocurrencies through Twitter posts alone. Between May and November 2021, he tweeted about doge 30 times on 22 different days. On five of those days, doge pumped more than 20%. When Musk said he hasn’t and won’t sell any doge on May 20, the meme coin pumped 32%. These pumps tended to have a long tail — on six separate occasions in the same time frame, dogecoin sustained more than 5% gains a week after a Musk tweet.

Read more: Out-of-pocket investors want to sue Twitter in Dogecoin lawsuit

By the end of 2022, the cryptocurrency market was in a tailspin. Still, Musk’s doge tweets managed to pump the coin by 5% on average, but longterm impact was limited.

According to the US district judge presiding over the case, the third amended complaint filed on Wednesday would “likely” be allowed. Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the defendants weren’t likely prejudiced and granted the investors’ request to remove the Dogecoin Foundation as a defendant.

At the start of April, Musk’s lawyers moved to dismiss the $258 billion lawsuit. According to them, it was a “fanciful work of fiction.” However, it appears that proceedings aren’t going Musk’s way. These latest amendments, which now include Musk’s poor choice to change Twitter’s logo to the Doge mascot, add fuel to a growing list of accusations that are becoming increasingly challenging to ignore.

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Social media giant Twitter could find itself named alongside Elon Musk, Tesla, and the Dogecoin Foundation in an ongoing class action lawsuit that claims doge is a Musk-controlled Ponzi scheme, reports The Block.

The case is being brought by a number of investors who lost money in May 2021 when, after almost two years of constant praise, Musk seemingly disavowed the meme coin and its price shed almost $90 million.

According to the plaintiffs’ legal team, Musk’s decision to switch the Twitter logo for an image of Dogecoin’s famous shiba inu mascot could work in their favor by establishing a concrete link between the two.

Read more: Measuring how much Elon Musk pumps crypto like Shiba Inu, Floki, Doge

“After reviewing defendants’ motions to dismiss we are more confident than ever that we will prevail in this case,” said lawyer Evan Spencer (via the Block).

“Our opposition brief will be filed within 60 days. After the court rules in our favor, we will be filing a motion to add Twitter as a Defendant.”

In March, lawyers for Musk, Tesla, and the Dogecoin Foundation requested that a US federal district court dismiss the case. However, if a judge refuses this request, the already-troubled bird app could find itself dragged into what is an already complicated case.

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Since news of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover was announced last week, his favorite crypto Dogecoin has more than doubled in price. The Shiba Inu-branded token was launched as a joke by crypto-skeptic Jackson Palmer, yet it’s soared into the eighth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap — supported by Reddit community WallStreetBets and various superstars like Snoop Dogg, Mia Khalifa, and Mark Cuban.

The meteoric rise of Dogecoin came as an incredible plot twist to Palmer, who thinks that crypto is part of the grift economics of contemporary capitalism. Palmer would like crypto to die out, but could Dogecoin outlast the hype?

Its meteoric rise has to be seen in the context of last year’s speculative mania with meme stocks, which began with Gamestop. As the stock market regularly churned out new all-time highs, young people entered the market. They fueled an online craze in stocks through Reddit boards such as WallStreetBets. Soon, hordes of young retail buyers turned to crypto.

Gamestop, the flagship of the meme craze, is down -45% in the past year.

Judging by its history, Dogecoin may very well dump after the exuberance wanes, or maybe when Musk once again admits on live television that, for him, Dogecoin is just a “hustle.”

Dogecoin doesn’t have any use cases. Its only strength seems to be a very large online community spearheaded by influencers who believe in the coin with almost religious fervor. Yet, Musk’s Tesla accepts doge as a form of payment for its merchandise. Just this week, Musk seemed to suggest that the newly acquired Twitter could soon accept doge to pay $8 for a blue check symbol.

Dogecoin is similar to meme stocks in many respects — its survival hangs on the perseverance of its fans. However, Dogecoin has what many other meme assets do not: Elon Musk’s support. Tesla accepts doge for merchandise payments, which may encourage the prospect of Twitter embracing it. Along with Musk’s history of pumping it up, this may fuel speculation for Dogecoin.

However, capitulation by Elon Musk shouldn’t be ruled out either. Tesla sold 75% of its bitcoin and scrapped plans to accept it as payment thanks to price volatility.

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In the last half year of 2021, the world’s richest man Elon Musk appeared to repeatedly pump his three favorite coins on Twitter: bitcoin, ether, and doge.

Things haven’t gone so well since then. Bitcoin is down 66% year-to-date, ether by 64%, and doge by 55%. Musk only tweeted about bitcoin twice in 2022 so far, and ether once. But Dogecoin has been tweet-graced by the memecoin’s defacto leader 16 times, on 13 separate days.

News of Musk’s Twitter takeover has flooded the platform recently, leading to a nice pump for doge that has it outperforming bitcoin 17 times over in October. In the same time period, the price has more than doubled.

So, Protos collected all of Musk’s doge-related tweets this year to see just how much impact he’s had on its price.

Musk tweets may have pumped doge price by 4.5% on average

Last year, Protos tracked Musk’s impact on doge’s price from May to November. All of his 30 tweets (across 22 days) coincided with a price increase from open to high on the day of the tweet, as well as compared to the highs from a week and month after.

On five days in which Musk graced the world with a dogecoin tweet, doge pumped more than 20%. In the week after Musk proclaimed he never has and never will sell doge, it soared up to 32%.

Protos calculated that on six separate occasions since May to November last year, doge sustained more than 5% gains after a week following a Musk tweet.

Granted, when we published last year’s piece, the shiba inu-inspired coin had risen a stunning 10,800% year-to-date. Bitcoin was up 350% and ether 1,000%. It’s no surprise that Musk’s possible effects have dampened amid a price apocalypse this past year — however, our results suggest that it hasn’t completely diminished his impact, either.

On average, Musk’s 16 tweets coincided with an increase in doge’s price by 4.5% by end of day. Only three led to a decrease in that same time period, all of which had low engagement by Musk standards — two were replies in a thread where the billionaire fired shots at Dogecoin’s co-founder Jackson Palmer, and one was to promote his new Burnt Hair perfume.

On November 23, 2021, Musk’s three replies that mentioned Dogecoin led to a price decrease of 43% by end of day — but all were replies to Binance chief Changpeng Zhao, demanding clarity on an issue that affected doge transactions on the crypto exchange.

“Doge holders using Binance should be protected from errors that are not their fault,” one read.

However, every time Musk explicitly showed support for doge, prices soared. When Musk teased that Tesla merch would soon accept the meme currency he garnered 355,000 likes — and doge saw a 21% and 9% bump by end of day and week, respectively.

Similarly, when Musk declared he would “keep supporting Dogecoin” in a standalone tweet, it racked up 390,000 likes and doge enjoyed a 14% bump by end of day — by the end of the week, it was up 39%.

Read more: WallStreetBets vs. Elon Musk: Who can pump Dogecoin more?

On average, Musk tweets coincided with a decent bump in doge’s daily price. But the bear market was too strong to give his tweets longer impact. By close a week after posting, price declined by an average of -8%.

However, out of Musk’s top six tweets by engagement, five correlated with a doge pump anywhere from 4% to 39% by the end of the week.

It’s tricky to definitively measure Musk’s impact on doge prices. That said, a peculiar correlation exists.

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