The price of PEPE surged on Tuesday after billionaire Elon Musk changed his name on the social media platform X and updated his profile picture to an image of Pepe the Frog playing a video game.
While Musk's changes on X have sparked optimism for the meme coin, this is not the first time the billionaire has endorsed memes and images of Pepe the Frog on social media. Let's take a look back.
What happened: Pepe Coin, based on the famous Pepe the Frog meme, was launched in mid-April 2023 and attracted the attention of the cryptocurrency community. The number of holders has rapidly increased thanks to the popularity and recognition of the meme.
While the first year of Pepe Coin was memorable, the second year of this cryptocurrency includes listing on Robinhood, making it easier for investors to purchase. The coin reached a new all-time high in December, following many cryptocurrencies hitting new all-time highs after the 2024 presidential election.
The Pepe the Frog meme was created by artist Matt Furie. Because this meme is so popular, being used by the richest person in the world and the most followed account on X could help boost interest in cryptocurrency.
Musk changed his name to Kekius Maximus on X in late December 2024 while changing his profile picture to an image that appears to combine Pepe the Frog with a gamer. This move led to the creation of a new cryptocurrency meme Kekius Maximus, while also causing the price of Pepe stock to rise over 11% in the past 24 hours at the time of writing.
Musk has also tweeted that he will reach level 80 in PoE hardcore, a post related to the game Path of Exile 2 that he enjoys playing.
Kek is a term used in gaming culture often translated as lol or haha, based on translations from popular games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft. There is also the Egyptian god Kek, depicted as Pepe the Frog since the 2016 election, according to Dictionary.com.
The recent name and profile picture change is not the first time Musk has used images of Pepe the Frog on X. The billionaire has shared several Pepe-related memes throughout 2024 and responded to many Pepe memes.
On March 13, 2024, Musk used a meme featuring Pepe the Frog to explain the First and Second Amendments, according to Coinmarketcap. This may be the first time Musk used the Pepe the Frog meme on X. This could be a starting point for investors looking to buy Pepe based on Musk's potential future support.
You may not be a billionaire like Elon Musk, but you can discover hidden gems in the stock market by using our proprietary data and pattern recognition technology — check out five lesser-known stocks worth your attention.
Investing $1,000 in PEPE: Pepe Coin traded at a high of $0.000009332 on March 13, 2024. A $1,000 investment at that time could buy 107,158,165.45 PEPE.
Based on the current price of $0.00002047 for PEPE at the time of writing, a $1,000 investment would be worth $2,193.53 today. This represents a potential increase of 119.4% over the past nine months.
In comparison, an equivalent investment of $1,000 in Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, or the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, which tracks the S&P 500, would not perform as well.
$1,000 invested in Dogecoin would be worth $1,829.74 today, up 83% year over year. $1,000 invested in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust would be worth $1,129.76 today, up 13.0% year over year.
Benzinga previously shared that investing in Dogecoin in April 2019 or July 2020, when Musk famously mentioned Dogecoin in comments and posted his first meme, could yield significant returns.
There is no guarantee that Musk will completely switch from the Doge meme to the Pepe meme and maintain the growth of the cryptocurrency, but the cryptocurrency sector may closely monitor this in 2025.