Elon Musk’s bizarre name change on X turns trader’s $66 into $3M profit

Elon Musk’s brief name change on X to “Kekius Maximus” — a reference to a Pepe-Gladiator meme — has seen one lucky memecoin trader turn $66 of Ether into as much as $3 million in just 18 days.

The trader bought 10.17 million of the Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS) memecoins 18 days ago on Dec. 14 and sold 2.81 million of the tokens for 60.3 Ether (ETH) on Jan. 1 while holding the rest — marking an eye-popping 45,900-fold paper gain, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain said on X.

Kekius Maximus is a mashup of the internet meme Pepe the Frog and Maximus Decimus Meridius, the main protagonist of the 2000 film Gladiator, played by Russell Crowe.

Etherscan data shows the KEKIUS memecoin was created on Dec. 13, which accumulated $11.4 million by Dec. 31 before exploding to $380 million at its peak on Jan. 1, according to CoinGecko.

Musk had also posted AI-generated images of the Pepe the Frog-inspired cartoon geared up for battle in the world-famous Colosseum in Rome.

One of his posts amassed 48.2 million views on X, extending the KEKIUS memecoin rally even further at the time.

However, that figure has since fallen to $100.5 million after Musk changed his profile name and picture back to Elon Musk. 

Despite the price fall, more than 23,600 investors still own the ERC-20 KEKIUS tokens, CoinGecko data shows.

Several Kekius Maximus-linked memecoins launched on Solana around the same time but failed to attract the same level of trader attention, DEXScreener data shows.

Related: Memecoins lose momentum as $40B lost in December

Musk’s attention was drawn to a far more serious matter on Jan. 1 after one of his Tesla-manufactured Cybertrucks exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas only a few hours into the New Year.

Musk said a bomb or fireworks caused the rented Tesla Cybertruck to explode in what authorities are investigating as a possible act of terror.

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