Elon Musk changed his X name back to his real name after temporarily setting it to Kekius Maximus — triggering a selloff.
Musk’s X name change triggered a 75% price plunge in just one hour for Kekius Maximus on New Year’s Eve day. The token’s price previously skyrocketed from $0.01 to $0.39 after the Tesla CEO adopted it as his X profile name and X profile image earlier on the same day. Kekius Maximus reached a peak market cap of $380 million.
The memecoin features Pepe the frog combined with the kek online exclamation and an ancient Rome theme. Maximus references the 2000 film Gladiator character Maximus Decimus Meridius played by Russel Crowe.
The details
Before making the change, Musk teased the upcoming change in an X post. The post read that “Kekius Maximus will soon reach level 80 in hardcore PoE.”
The message referenced Path of Exile (PoE), a popular action role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world with intricate skill trees and character customization that is often compared to Diablo II. A second instalment of the game is currently in the works.
Lookonchain data revealed that a trader was able to make $3.05 million in 16 days with a $66 investment, for a return of 45,906 times. The company explained in a post:
“This trader spent 0.017 $ETH($66) to buy 10.17M $KEKIUS and sold 2.81M $KEKIUS for 60.3 $ETH($201K), leaving 7.37M $KEKIUS($2.85M).”
Another pseudonymous trader, known as rektdolphin.eth, changed his 62 billion PEPE tokens worth about $1.2 million for 4.23 million KEKIUS. This investor was not as lucky, with Lookonchain data revealing that their holdings fell to just $290,000 12 hours later.
X user Yazan largely predicted the predicament on Dec. 31. He warned everyone who was buying Kekius Maximus that Musk changing his profile again would have disastrous consequences for them:
“For anyone that’s buying Kekius Maximus memecoins. Whenever Elon changes his PFP and name back, you’re gonna get f****d.”
