On Sunday, Dogecoin lost more than a third of its value after Tesla CEO and cryptocurrency supporter Elon Musk referred to it as a "hustle" when appearing as a guest host on "Saturday Night Live."

Dogecoin was trading for as low as $0.416 on Binance, down 36% from its previous high of $0.65 before the broadcast. Later on Sunday, it retraced some of the leaps and was the last trading at $0.569.

On Saturday, at 11:30 p.m. EDT, the billionaire Tesla Inc CEO hosted the Saturday Night Live show (0330 GMT on Sunday).

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been waiting for his response for days after his tweets earlier this year transformed the once-obscure digital currency into a speculator's dream.

When asked what dogecoin is, Musk answered, "It's the currency of the future." It's an irresistible financial machine on its way to conquering the globe.”

When show cast member Michael Che countered, "So, it's a hustle?" Musk chuckled and said, "Yeah, it's a hustle."

Musk is one of the few business moguls to be invited to host the venerable sitcom. Musk's appearance on the legendary late-night show reintroduces him to the public eye at a time when Tesla's stock is losing momentum after a meteoric rise last year.

The outspoken CEO has made several remarks on Twitter about cryptocurrencies and has chastised traditional currency for having negative real interest rates.

In February, he said, "Only a fool wouldn't look elsewhere."

That month, his enigmatic tweets "Doge" and "Dogecoin is the people's crypto" sparked a rally in dogecoin, a spoof of more popular bitcoin and ethereum.

“Cryptocurrency is promising, but please invest with caution!” Musk tweeted on Thursday. “It should be called speculation at this point,” he said in a video clip attached.

In the video, he also said that cryptocurrency has a "fair chance" of being "the future currency of the Earth."

Some financial analysts questioned whether Musk's comments on the cryptocurrency were appropriate considering his ability to influence its price.

“I believe he is having a great time... He can say whatever he wants about dogecoin or cryptos, fully aware that only his words drive the price,” said James Angel, an associate professor of financial markets and cryptocurrency at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

“Anyone who wants to play Elon Musk's game should expect to lose their entire investment.”

The flurry of selling appeared to be causing issues for famous retail trading site Robinhood, which tweeted early on Sunday that some customers were having “intermittent issues” trading cryptocurrencies due to high trading volume and volatility.

Later, the company stated that the problems had been resolved and that customers who had been impacted by the outage would be contacted.

Dogecoin has soared more than 800 percent in the last month, according to crypto data tracker CoinGecko.com, and is now the fourth-largest digital currency, with a market capitalization of $73 billion. It reached a new high of $0.73 on Thursday.

Tesla announced in February that it had purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin and would soon embrace it as a form of payment for its electric vehicles, marking a significant step toward mainstream adoption and sending bitcoin to a new high of nearly $62,000.

Tesla's stock rose 1.3 percent to $672.37 on Friday.

Some crypto analysts believe that the dogecoin selloff on Sunday was fueled by speculation and that Musk has not harmed the cryptocurrency's long-term prospects.

“Doge's long-term fundamentals are unaffected. “This is a great time to buy,” said Jehan Chu, managing partner of Kenetic Capital, a Hong Kong blockchain venture capital company.

“It has the value of a real social currency.”