Elon Musk has changed his name on the microblogging platform X once again, just two days after adopting the moniker "Kekius Maximus". The Solana-based memecoin Kekius Maximus Crypto token dropped 122.8 per cent to ₹0.307 on Thursday, compared to ₹0.684 in a matter of nearly 15 minutes.
Elon Musk changed his profile picture to one from his days of campaigning for US President-elect Donald Trump. The display picture now has the US flag in the backdrop, as the Space X CEO is seen holding a mic mid-speech.
Before the crash, KEKIUS was riding high, reaching a peak of $0.0057 earlier on Wednesday afternoon. This surge was driven by Elon Musk's alteration of his X profile, adopting the name "Kekius Maximus" and displaying a profile picture featuring Pepe the Frog, styled as Maximus from the iconic film Gladiator.
However, the excitement proved to be fleeting. Following Musk's return to his original avatar and name, KEKIUS's value plummeted to $0.001165, underscoring the extremely volatile characteristic of meme-based cryptocurrencies. Despite this sharp decline, KEKIUS remained 232 per cent higher than its price just 24 hours earlier.
According to reports, the trading volume for KEKIUS skyrocketed by 1,310 per cent, reaching an impressive $9.9 million in the past 24 hours.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the CEO of Space X, adopted a new moniker on the social media platform X — 'Kekius Maximus'.
Elon Musk also changed his X profile picture with an imaginative version of the 'Pepe the Frog' meme. The depiction features Pepe dressed as a warrior, complete with armour, wielding a joystick for a video game.
On Tuesday, following Elon Musk's adoption of ‘Kekius Maximus’ moniker on his X (formerly Twitter) account, KEKIUS experienced an astonishing surge of over 500 per cent in value within hours, as reported by CoinGecko.
Elon Musk issued a stark US bankruptcy warning, while also changing his name on X—sending the price of the small bitcoin rival surging by around 2,000 per cent.
Kekius Maximus was a reference to Elon Musk's character in the Path of Exile 2 video game, a reference to the smash-hit Gladiator movie and a pun on the internet-gaming term kek, a variation of lol (laugh out loud) that originated in South Korea and on the World of Warcraft online game.
This is not the first rodeo of Elon Musk with cryptocurrency, memecoin.
Elon Musk had also campaigned against excessive US spending, which resulted in the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge. The Tesla chief has said this could strip $2 trillion from US spending.
Notably, the Doge department is a nod to the shiba inu doge meme that's also linked to the dogecoin cryptocurrency, named by Elon Musk as his "favourite" cryptocurrency and accepted as payment by his Tesla car company—though Tesla continues to hold around 10,000 bitcoin worth around $1 billion on its balance sheet.
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