The "Kekius Maximus" era has come to a sudden end as Elon Musk switches his X handle back to his original name, causing a dramatic shift in the crypto market.
On December 31, Musk changed his name on the social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus," which triggered a sharp rise in meme coins with similar themes. However, following his return to his original name, these meme coins have begun to lose value. The Kekius Maximus coin dropped almost 50% in the past 24 hours, trading at $0.09217, though it had still surged over 6,000% in the past week with a market cap of $92 million.
Some traders who jumped on the hype are now facing significant losses. One analyst shared a case where a trader exchanged $1.2 million in PEPE for 4.23 million KEKIUS coins, only to see their investment plummet to $290,000 in just 12 hours Another analyst declared the "reign" of Kekius Maximus over, following Musk’s return to his usual name.
The market also saw other frog-themed meme coins losing value after Musk’s name change, with their collective market cap, which had peaked at $11.8 billion on December 31, now retreating.
Musk, known for his influence on meme coins, had earlier changed his profile picture to an image of Pepe the frog and retweeted a post celebrating his new persona. This isn’t the first time Musk has impacted the crypto world—his tweets have previously caused Dogecoin's price to soar, and his recent meme featuring Doge caused another brief spike in the coin's value.
