While arguably not as absurd as this week’s crypto tokens inspired by the deaths of Bitcoin hater Charlie Munger and controversial American diplomat Henry Kissinger, there’s a slew of other head-turning meme coins popping up this week—and perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re inspired by the best-known Dogecoin fan himself, Elon Musk.
Musk, the owner of Twitter (aka X) and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, made headlines Wednesday when he told Disney CEO Bob Iger and heads of other companies to “go fuck yourself” during an onstage interview.
Disney and companies like Apple, IBM, and Ubisoft pulled advertising from Twitter in the wake of Musk amplifying an antisemitic post and criticizing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit focused on combating antisemitic hate. Companies also complained that antisemitic and white nationalist content was appearing next to their ads on Twitter.
Despite their respective stated reasons for pulling spending from Twitter, Musk assailed them publicly this week. And that outburst is now the basis for a series of meme coins, continuing a trend of Musk-themed crypto tokens sprouting up—before, in most cases, quickly fading from memory.
Numerous GFY tokens have popped up across networks like Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, according to data from GeckoTerminal. While most of them aren’t especially liquid, the GFY Ethereum token pool on Uniswap has over $600,000 in liquidity, and the token itself has a $7.28 million market cap at a current price of just $0.0000107. It’s up 77% on the day.
Similarly, there are numerous meme coins inspired by Tesla’s newly released Cybertruck, with the biggest deployed on BNB Chain. The CYBERTRUCK token has racked up some $671,000 worth of trading volume over the past day as the price jumped 125% to above $0.09—though it has a market cap of just $163,000.
Meme coins are famously volatile, and while they sometimes can rise dramatically based on hype and ties to public figures and recent events, they also often come crashing down. Sometimes, the typically anonymous creators “rug pull” a meme token and use investors as exit liquidity. In any case, it’s very easy to lose money on meme coins, which are favored primarily by self-described “degen” traders.
Musk has long captivated meme coin aficionados with his interest in Dogecoin, as his tweets about it have often moved the market in the past. And he’s been inspiring all sorts of tribute coins before now, including the recent GROK token based on Twitter’s AI assistant, and Floki Inu—a token named after Musk’s dog, apparently.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.