Today's Top 3 Crypto Gainers: Dogecoin Spikes on Elon Musk’s Twitter Deal

It's usually Elon Musk's tweets, not a Twitter takeover, that push up Dogecoin's price.

Cryptocurrency prices were back in the green this morning after Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the all important psychological barrier of $40,000. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin was up 5% in the past 24 hours and the other leading crypto, Ethereum (ETH) was up 6%.

But it's Elon Musk's favorite token that's grabbing crypto headlines with a 24% gain in the past 24 hours, and a 14% gain this week. The Tesla CEO will buy Twitter in a $44 billion takeover, sparking speculation that Dogecoin (DOGE) might play a role in the billionaire's vision for the social media platform. More about that story and today's other top gainers in this article.

Dogecoin -- up 24%

When Musk sneezes, Dogecoin catches a cold. And when Musk takes over Twitter, Dogecoin believers dream of going to the moon. Musk has a long history of pushing DOGE's price up via Twitter, it's just that he usually does it through tweets rather than takeovers.

Twitter enabled Bitcoin tipping last year, and the Dogecoin community hopes Musk's leadership will mean DOGE payments soon feature on the platform too. This could help it edge out other digital currencies as a form of payment. One Redditor wrote, "Personally, I can't wait to see Dogecoin reaching $1 with Elon as the Twitter owner." The closest Dogecoin has come to $1 was last May when it reached a high of $0.74, but more recently it's struggled to get higher than $0.20.

Tesla, another Musk company, already accepts Dogecoin payments for merchandise. However, Dogecoin has a number of hurdles to cross before it can become a widely-accepted payment option. From environmental issues to structural ones, the journey from joke coin to global digital currency is not an easy one.

Oasis (ROSE) -- up 16%

The so-called "Coinbase effect" strikes again. The popular cryptocurrency exchange is on a mission to add many new coins and tokens, and when it does, it often results in a short-term price jump. Yesterday, Coinbase tweeted it would start trading Oasis this morning, assuming liquidity conditions were met. This morning, it announced ROSE was live.

ROSE is the native token of the Oasis network. It's a privacy-focused smart contract crypto that aims to power private, scalable DeFi apps. According to its mission statement, it also wants to use a form of tokenized data to help individuals take control of the data they generate. Interest in privacy coins and smart contract cryptos pushed its price up almost 900% last year.

The Graph (GRT) -- up 16%

The Graph is a bit like a search engine for blockchains. It's a popular behind-the-scenes crypto that indexes information to make it easier to query data across various different networks. It isn't completely clear what drove its price increase, but the most likely reason is the announcement of "Graph Day" on June 2 in San Francisco. The day-long event will feature various talks on dapps, Web 3, and the future of the internet. Following Graph Day, there will be a three-day hackathon, where developers can turn some of their ideas into action.

Bottom line

Cryptocurrency prices have been choppy for most of this year, and we can expect continued volatility. There are a lot of unknowns in the crypto world right now, including geopolitical and economic uncertainty. This has made many investors more risk-averse, making high-risk assets like crypto less appealing.

If you're considering buying one of today's top gainers, make sure you do your own research and only invest money you can afford to lose. Don't buy a crypto because it's seen decent gains in the short term, instead look at how you think it might perform in the longer term. This mindset can help you avoid a fear of missing out and pushing you into investments you may later regret.