Dogecoin surged by more than 23% on Tuesday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company would be accepting the cryptocurrency for buyers who want to buy Tesla merchandise. Musk said in a tweet that Tesla will make some merchandise buyable with Doge and then "see how it goes."

This isn't the first time Musk has talked up Dogecoin on social media. He previously called it his favorite digital coin and even mentioned it in several interviews. In February, Musk published a string of tweets about Dogecoin, sending its pricing skyrocketing by 10% within the first hour and up to 50% within the next 24 hours.

Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the developers of Dogecoin, created it as a joke in 2013. Its logo is inspired by the Japanese Shiba Inu dog, which was the source of the original "doge" meme.

Musk's tweets and a surge in amateur investor interest spurred a speculative frenzy in the cryptocurrency earlier this year, pushing up its price. Dogecoin soared from being worth a fraction of a penny at the start of the year to over 74 cents in May, setting a new high. It has subsequently dropped precipitously, with the token now trading at only 20 cents per coin, down more than 70% from its all-time high.

Shiba Inu, a so-called meme token that bills itself as a "dogecoin killer," has recently emerged as a competitor to Dogecoin. Shiba Inu is currently the 13th-largest coin by market value, having briefly surpassed Dogecoin at one point.

Musk's tweets and the statement had also affected the prices of other cryptocurrencies in the past. Musk previously tweeted that buyers would be able to buy Tesla electric vehicles with Bitcoin, sending the price of the world's largest cryptocurrency to new highs. A month after the tweet, Bitcoin reached nearly $65,000 per coin.

In February, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. The announcement sent the price soared 19.5% from $38,850 to $46,400 in one day. Despite the fact that the quantity of BTC Tesla purchased was minuscule in comparison to daily trading volume on the over $1 trillion cryptocurrency, it was able to dictate the market narrative for months.

In May, Bitcoin prices dropped after Musk said that Bitcoin would no longer be accepted as payment. While the market had already dropped significantly from its highs in recent months, this tweet was the last nail in the coffin, dropping the price of Bitcoin from $56,800 to $49,500.