Elon Musk’s new X avatar sparks rally for Pepe-inspired meme coins, KEKIUS up 2600%

Pepe-themed meme coins PEPE and KEKIUS have seen notable gains after tech mogul Elon Musk rebranded his X account.

Ethereum-based KEKIUS is up over 2,600%, reaching an all-time high of $0.301 at the time of writing, while its market cap has increased from $12.8 million to over $265 million. Meanwhile, Pepe (PEPE) launched a parabolic rally, rising nearly 20% to minimize some of last week’s losses.

Recent excitement has also spurred the creation of several similar meme coins bearing tokens such as KM, KEKIUS, and MAXIMUS on token distributors such as Solana-based Pump.fun and Tron’s SunPump.

Kekius Maximus meme tokens were created in Solana. Source: Pump.fun What happened?

On the last day of 2024, Musk surprised his 210 million X followers, especially meme money enthusiasts, by changing his screen name to ‘Kekius Maximus’ and updating his avatar with an image of popular meme character Pepe the Frog dressed in golden gladiator armor. and is holding a video game controller.

Elon Musk rebrands X as Kekius Maximus | Source: X/elonmusk

The new profile picture appears to be inspired by Pepe the Frog, a popular character in cinema played by Russell Crowe in the 2000 film ‘Gladiator’, Maximus Decimus Meridius, as well as an online meme and nod to the gaming community.

While Musk hasn’t made an official announcement for the rebranding, before making the changes, the Tesla CEO dropped an cryptic hint in his Tuesday X post that “Kekius Maximus will soon hit level 80 in hardcore PoE.”

The tweet references the online game Path of Exile (a video game Musk is known to have played); Reaching level 80 here is a major milestone in the game’s progression system.

Elon Musk’s affinity for Pepe-themed imagery has been well documented, with previous instances of him sharing Pepe memes on X sparking similar market reactions. More recently, on December 10, Musk retweeted the ‘Kekius Maximus’ image created by Grok, which sparked a brief rally for PEPE.

Overly exciting rallies cannot be sustained

However, meme coin investors should proceed with caution, as rallies driven by celebrity excitement are often short-lived; This is a pattern seen time and time again in the crypto world.

For example, Elon Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin (DOGE) in late 2020 sparked a massive rally, pushing DOGE to an all-time high of $0.7376 as of May 2021, with a market cap of over $47 billion. However, the excitement eventually faded and Dogecoin’s price dropped, closing the year at just $0.1708.

Similarly, Solana-based meme coin Water (WATER) soared 400% after football star Lionel Messi promoted it on Instagram, but nearly all of the gains were soon erased.

As of press time, PEPE was down 9% from its intraday high of $0.000021, with PEPE holders booking profits. Meanwhile, KEKIUS retreated 6% from its all-time high of $0.301 and was changing hands at $0.286.