Dogecoin Hero Elon Musk Just Crashed Another Meme Coin—Here’s How

The Elon Musk effect goes both ways.

Ethereum meme coin Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS) soared over 3,000% from a $12.7 million market cap to nearly $400 million, in the 30 hours following Tesla CEO Elon Musk changing his Twitter name to Kekius Maximus. But what comes up must come down. Once Musk changed his profile back to normal, it caused the token to plummet 67% in an hour to $95 million.

Kekius Maximus, according to the meme coin’s website, is also known as “Pepe the Frog Emperor.” The art depicts the popular internet frog meme as the ruler of a mythical empire. It appears that the meme was originally created using Grok, Twitter’s native AI tool, with Musk, who owns Twitter, endorsing it on December 10.

Over the coming days the Pepe-inspired meme gained more popularity with the likes of citizen journalist Autism Capital, the official Pepe meme coin account, and, of course, Musk posting about the Grok-generated meme. This resulted in KEKIUS launching on Ethereum and climbing to a $1.7 million market cap by December 27.

This is when Musk announced that his Path of Exile character would be named Kekius Maximus, resulting in a near 1,300% jump to a $20 million market cap. Keep in mind, that was before Musk changed his profile picture and name to the Grok-spawned meme on New Years Eve, causing the meme coin to go parabolic, nearly touching a $400 million market cap.

However, as the new year dawned concerning news circulated of a Tesla Cybertruck exploding outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, causing the driver to die in the blast. This prompted Musk to return to his original Twitter handle and profile picture to address the unfolding incident.

“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk posted. “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” he later added.

This change of name and profile picture to address the still developing incident—that is now suspected as an act of terror by law enforcement—caused KEKIUS to crash 83% from its all-time high over just 10 hours.

Since the explosion, Musk has not posted about Kekius Maximus. Instead, he has shifted his attention to British politics.

Musk is currently pleading for far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released from prison after being jailed for contempt of court in October—due to repeatedly claiming that a Syrian teenage refugee had violently attacked “young English girls,” to justify the refugee being waterboarded by fellow school pupils on camera, Robinson’s claim was disproven in court and he was ordered to never make the claims again, but he did—as well as endorsing the sixth largest political party in the country, Reform UK.

As you can expect, tons of meme coins have been created as a result including a Free Tommy Robinson (TOMMY) token that hit a $4.8 million market cap.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.