Elon Musk Jokes About 'Regretamine' Drug, Sparks Gags About Dogecoin

A tweet by Elon Musk about a "new drug coming called Regretamine" has sparked a flurry of memes related to Dogecoin on social media, including one from the Tesla CEO himself.

The joke cryptocurrency has seen a surge of interest following the recent GameStop stock buying frenzy as well as following previous Dogecoin-related tweets from Musk.

On March 1, Musk tweeted: "New drug coming out called Regretamine. Pop one & all regrets are gone."

Musk then wrote in a subsequent tweet: "Doge meme shield (legendary item)." His latest post was shared with a cartoon depicting a person in army gear appearing to shield a child sleeping on a bed labeled "Dogecoin" from a rainfall of "Dogecoin value dropping."

Musk's latest tweets have each received over 200,000 likes and more than 20,000 retweets, including several replies with Dogecoin-themed memes.

User @MattWallace888 tweeted: "Anyone who sells Dogecoin too early is going to need a boatload of Regretamine at some point in the future in order to stop regretting it."

The post was shared with a meme of Musk as well as rapper Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons from the band Kiss—both of whom have previously tweeted about Dogecoin—riding a moving train titled "Hop on the train."

User @itsALLrisky tweeted: "The only drug worth taking: The #DogePill," sharing a cartoon depiction of two hands holding a bottle of "hard to swallow pills." The bottom half of the cartoon said "someday, your nanna will buy groceries with Dogecoin," showing a pair of hands holding a few Dogecoins.

User @DogeArmyMajor tweeted: "I've been Doge pilled," posting an image of one hand holding a Bitcoin, with the other hand holding a few Dogecoins.

On Tuesday, the price of Dogecoin (listed as DOGE on the cryptocurrency market) was recorded to be at $0.050659 USD, with a 24-hour trading volume of $1,537,714,102 USD. Its latest price marked a 1.09 percent rise in the last 24 hours, at the time of reporting, according to CoinMarketCap.

On Sunday, the developers for Dogecoin released the cryptocurrency's first significant update since July 2019.

The update included "important performance improvements" such as one that "significantly improves the speed at which a node can upload blocks."

The latest update also reduced "the default time that transactions are cached in the mempool from 336 hours to 24 hours."

The price of Dogecoin, which began as a joke when it launched in 2013, soared from late January to early February before declining and stabilizing in recent weeks, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

It previously hit record levels, including a rise of more than 800 percent, reaching around $0.082 at one point.

Dogecoin's rise came after the price of GameStop stocks skyrocketed, fueled by investments from users on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets.

The GameStop price surge inspired members of the subreddit r/SatoshiStreetBets—which describes itself as "the crypto version of WallStreetBets"—to attempt to do the same for Dogecoin.

In recent days, a years-old petition urging Amazon to let customers pay in Dogecoin also garnered fresh attention as members of a popular Reddit community resurfaced the campaign and urged others to sign.

The petition, titled Doge4Amazon, was launched on Change.org in September 2018 by a user named "Mark E" with the goal of attracting 25,000 signatures. As of March 2, the petition has received over 106,500 signatures.

In early February, Mastercard announced it will "start supporting select cryptocurrencies directly on our network" this year, as it is "preparing for the future of crypto and payments."

The card company's latest move would allow customers to settle their payments using cryptocurrencies. This would mean customers could pay vendors directly in cryptocurrency.

Dogecoin's rise has also generated renewed interest in other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, the world's first and largest cryptocurrency based on market cap price.

In early February, Tesla announced it had invested around $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, while the price of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap price, surpassed $1,500 for the first time.