Pepe meme coins PEPE and KEKIUS recorded notable gains after tech mogul Elon Musk renamed his X account.
Ethereum-based KEKIUS gained over 2,600%, reaching an all-time high of $0.301 at the time of writing, while its market cap increased from $12.8 million to over $265 million. Meanwhile, Pepe (PEPE) started a parabolic rally, rising about 20% to pare some of last week’s losses.
The recent hype has also spurred the creation of several similar meme coins on token providers such as Solana-based Pump.fun and Tron’s SunPump with tickers such as KM, KEKIUS and MAXIMUS.
What happened?
On the last day of 2024, Musk surprised his 210 million and holding a video game controller.
The new profile picture appears to be inspired by Maximus Decimus Meridius, a popular movie character played by Russell Crowe in the 2000 film Gladiator, as well as Pepe the Frog, an online meme and reference to the gaming community.
While Musk hasn’t made an official statement about the renaming, the Tesla CEO gave notice before making the changes in a post on Tuesday
The tweet refers to the online game Path of Exile (a video game developed by Musk).
