Billionaire and X owner Elon Musk posted a meme depicting Doge today. Although he directly referred to the Department of Government Efficiency, the meme asset Dogecoin also pumped briefly.

Is Musk deliberately trying to boost DOGE through these seemingly unrelated tweets? A recent class-action lawsuit against him directly addressed this possibility.

Elon Musk and DOGE

Today, there apparently exists a clear correlation between Dogecoin (DOGE), a prominent meme coin, and billionaire Elon Musk’s social media activity. Earlier, DOGE briefly began trending down until he posted a doge-centric meme.

This meme directly referenced Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.), but the coin’s value nevertheless increased.

This DOGE price bump proved short-lived, but it was still a noticeable correlation. A clear question arises: was Musk deliberately trying to boost DOGE?

On several recent occasions, the value of this meme coin has risen after Musk’s social media posts. In September, he clearly posted about D.O.G.E., which also boosted the unrelated cryptoasset.

Ultimately, it is impossible to definitively understand Musk’s intentions with his post. Recently, all of Musk’s Doge-related statements have referred to the political project, not the cryptoasset. If he was trying to pump the meme coin’s value, he wasn’t very successful: this growth flatlined and dropped again within hours.

There is, however, an alternate plausible explanation for this behavior. Last week, Dogecoin investors dropped a class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk over this exact issue. These investors accused Musk of deliberately manipulating DOGE’s price since 2021, alleging fraud and insider trading.

“Elon Musk literally named a government department ’Doge’ so he can post about it again whenever he wants, without getting in trouble,” X account ‘Sir Doge of the Coin,’ said.

Musk is a documented meme aficionado who may have a Doge appreciation independent of the asset or agency. After all, the underlying meme has existed since 2013 and can exist outside either one of these two contexts.

However, if Musk has been accused of criminally manipulating Dogecoin prices with his posts, then D.O.G.E.’s name could be an easy solution. By naming the agency thus, Musk would have plausible deniability that he isn’t talking about the cryptoasset at all. Whether Musk is or isn’t signaling to DOGE traders, there’s no way to establish his actual intent definitively.

Binance Labs has announced its investment in Kernel, a restaking infrastructure designed to enhance security and utility on the BNB Chain. 

Kernel aims to use restaking to transform BNB’s security into programmable trust, supporting a range of crypto services, applications, and middleware.

Kernel Will First Launch On the BNB Chain

The initial rollout will focus on integrating BNB Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) and restaked BNB as economic security to drive innovation in DeFi on the BNB Chain. 

Also, Kernel plans to expand by incorporating Bitcoin and its derivatives into its restaking framework. Over 20 decentralized applications (dApps), will utilize Kernel’s economic security. This will include AI co-processor Mira and ZK proof aggregation protocol Electron

Meanwhile, collaborations with projects like ListaDAO, Solv, and YieldNest will further enhance the utility of restaked assets. Kernel’s long-term vision includes scaling its infrastructure to additional layer-1 blockchains.

Kernel’s approach integrates native and liquid staking tokens from BNB, BTC, and other yield-bearing assets. This will likely optimize the asset’s utility and improve capital efficiency.

“Kernel exemplifies the type of innovative project that aligns with Binance Labs’ mission to bring more users onto Web3 by supporting meaningful technology and advancing the ecosystem,” Alex Odagiu, Investment Director at Binance Labs said in a press release.

This investment follows Binance Labs’ recent backing of Lombard, a Bitcoin-focused liquid staking platform. Lombard’s LBTC token currently captures 40% of the Bitcoin liquid staking token market and aims to expand its secure multi-chain staking protocol.

Additionally, Binance Labs has ventured into the decentralized science (DeSci) sector.  The firm recently invested in BIO Protocol, marking its first entry into this field. 

Overall, Binance Labs’ has seemingly adopted a broader strategy to diversify its $10 billion portfolio into innovative and impactful sectors.