Elon Musk prepared a surprise gift for everyone on New Year's Eve, when he changed his X account display name to Kekius Maximus and replaced his with an image of Pepe the Frog donning golden gladiator armor and holding a video gaming controller.
The altercation made on Tuesday caught the attention of 210 million followers, generating a wave of speculation across the platform. Musk did not provide an explanation for the change, but dropped an enigmatic hint in a Tuesday X post, saying
"Kekius Maximus will soon reach level 80 in hardcore Poe"
This tweet references the online game Path of Exile (a video game that Musk is recognized for playing), where reaching level 80 marks a significant milestone in the game's progression system.
Apparently, the name Kekius Maximus comes from the work Kekius, which is apparently a twist from the internet slang "Kek", with the word Maximus, the name of the heroic Roman general from the film Gladiator.
Elon Musk has also showed his long-time love for the Pepe-themed imagery, with him previously sharing numerous Pepe memes on X, and more recently, retweeting an image of Kekius Maximus created by Grok.
Following the move from Musk, the Ethereum-based meemcoin Kekius has surged an astonishing 2,600%, reaching a record high of $0.301. Its market capitalization also surged from $12.8 million to more than $265 million.
At the same time, Pepe experienced a 20% rally, clawing back some of the losses sustained in the previous week.
While these rallies are so often enticing, but if history has taught us anything, it is that all these rallies driven by celebrity hypes are always short-lived. And this pattern has repeatedly unteemed times in the crypto landscape.
One good example would be Elon Musk's push for Dogecoin in late 2020, which sparked a massive rally, pushing the price of Doge to an all time high of $0.7376 by May 2021, with a market cap of over $47 billion.
But not long after, the hype faded and the price of Doge eventually crashed, ending the year with the market price of just $0.1708.
Similarly, the Solana-based memecoin Water (WATER) shot up 400% after football legend Lionel Messi promoted the memecoin on his social media account. But the hype immediately died not long after.
It seems that it's not just the memecoin that is short-lived, but this trend as well. Just today, Elon Musk changed his X name handle and profile picture back to his previous ones after a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in front of Trump's Las Vegas hotel.
Police have confirmed that 1 has been killed and 7 injured in this incident. According to news outlets, this was a deliberate attack on Trump and Telsa, as large fireworks and or a bomb that was attached to the bed of the vehicle could have detonated the explosion.
Local authorities has also revealed that Musk is currently helping the local authorities with the investigation of the incident. Musk has also called this a terrorist attack.
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