Musk-promoted Dogecoin crashes as he appears on ‘SNL’ TV show

San Francisco: As Tesla CEO Elon Musk hosted the Saturday Night Live show on TV (US time), Dogecoin which is fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market value and promoted by Musk fell sharply early on Sunday.

When SNL first went live on NBC and was streamed in over 100 countries for the first time ever, the cryptocurrency hovered around 69 cents but as the show was on, the price dropped to 56 cents, a 12 per cent plunge.

Trading platform Robinhood also crashed for cryptocurrency users.

“We’re currently experiencing issues with crypto trading. We’re working to resolve this as soon as possible,” the crypto platform said in a tweet on Sunday

After vouching for Bitcoin, Tesla CEO Elon Musk now supports Dogecoin cryptocurrency, even calling him “Dogefather”.

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency invented by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system. Nearly 113 billion coins have already been mined.

Amid the surge in Bitcoin and Ether cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin has surged more than 659 per cent this year.

Tesla has already announced it has invested $1.5 billion in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.