Elon Musk tweeted. Dogecoin surged more than 50%

Cryptocurrency dogecoin has an important fan — Elon Musk, who has 45 million followers on Twitter and more money than any other person on the planet.

A series of tweets Musk sent overnight sent the Bitcoin rival up more than 50% in trading Thursday.

The first in a series of tweets was only one word: “Doge.” That was followed by other tweets hyping the currency, which was trading at 5 cents early Thursday, up from about 3 cents before his tweets.

“Dogecoin is the people’s crypto” he said in a follow-up tweet.

“No highs, no lows, only Doge,” he tweeted later.

This isn’t the first time his Twitter attention to Dogecoin has sent shares soaring. On December 20 a tweet in which he said, “One Word: Doge” sent the value up 20% and made it a trending topic on Twitter.

Musk has previously said his tweets about Dogecoin are “meant to be jokes.” The virtual currency, which originally started as an internet parody based on a viral dog meme, surged last week thanks to hyped-up Reddit users before plunging over the weekend.

Musk had previously been critical of more established, and far more expensive cryptocurrency bitcoin, calling it BS in some tweets. But in an interview Sunday on social app Clubhouse, Musk said he should have bought the digital currency eight years ago.

“I do at this point think bitcoin is a good thing. I’m late to the party, but I am a supporter of bitcoin,” he said.

He’s apparently determined not to be late to the party on Dogecoin.

— CNN Business’ Jazmin Goodwin and Hanna Ziady contributed to this report