The Elon Musk effect goes both ways.

Ethereum meme coin Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS) soared over 3,000% from a $12.7 million market cap to nearly $400 million, in the 30 hours following Tesla CEO Elon Musk changing his Twitter name to Kekius Maximus. But what comes up must come down. Once Musk changed his profile back to normal, it caused the token to plummet 67% in an hour to $95 million.

Kekius Maximus, according to the meme coin’s website, is also known as “Pepe the Frog Emperor.” The art depicts the popular internet frog meme as the ruler of a mythical empire. It appears that the meme was originally created using Grok, Twitter’s native AI tool, with Musk, who owns Twitter, endorsing it on December 10.

Over the coming days the Pepe-inspired meme gained more popularity with the likes of citizen journalist Autism Capital, the official Pepe meme coin account, and, of course, Musk posting about the Grok-generated meme. This resulted in KEKIUS launching on Ethereum and climbing to a $1.7 million market cap by December 27.

This is when Musk announced that his Path of Exile character would be named Kekius Maximus, resulting in a near 1,300% jump to a $20 million market cap. Keep in mind, that was before Musk changed his profile picture and name to the Grok-spawned meme on New Years Eve, causing the meme coin to go parabolic, nearly touching a $400 million market cap.

However, as the new year dawned concerning news circulated of a Tesla Cybertruck exploding outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, causing the driver to die in the blast. This prompted Musk to return to his original Twitter handle and profile picture to address the unfolding incident.

“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk posted. “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” he later added.

This change of name and profile picture to address the still developing incident—that is now suspected as an act of terror by law enforcement—caused KEKIUS to crash 83% from its all-time high over just 10 hours.

Since the explosion, Musk has not posted about Kekius Maximus. Instead, he has shifted his attention to British politics.

Musk is currently pleading for far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released from prison after being jailed for contempt of court in October—due to repeatedly claiming that a Syrian teenage refugee had violently attacked “young English girls,” to justify the refugee being waterboarded by fellow school pupils on camera, Robinson’s claim was disproven in court and he was ordered to never make the claims again, but he did—as well as endorsing the sixth largest political party in the country, Reform UK.

As you can expect, tons of meme coins have been created as a result including a Free Tommy Robinson (TOMMY) token that hit a $4.8 million market cap.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

A popular crypto analyst says one technical signal suggests that top meme token Dogecoin (DOGE) could be primed for a bounce.

Ali Martinez tells his 104,600 followers on the social media platform X that the Tom DeMark (TD) Sequential Indicator presented a bullish signal for DOGE.

“The TD Sequential presents a buy signal on the Dogecoin DOGE four-hour chart, anticipating a price rebound!”

Traders use the TD Sequential Indicator to predict potential trend reversals for tokens based on the closing prices of their 13 previous bars or candles.

Martinez also notes that Dogecoin whales bought more than 90 million DOGE in the past two days.

DOGE is trading at $0.314 at time of writing, a fractional decrease in the past 24 hours.

Looking at Bitcoin (BTC), Martinez warns that traders should be worried if the top-ranked crypto asset by market cap drops below a certain price level.

“You don’t want BTC to dip below $92,730 –  it’s essentially free-fall territory if that level breaks.”

Martinez suggests that below $92,730, the next on-chain support for BTC hovers at around $69,000 based on Glassnode’s UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) Realized Price Distribution, a metric that shows the amount of Bitcoin that last moved within a specific price bucket.

But while Martinez is sounding the alarm about a potential pullback for BTC, he notes that a 20-30% correction represents “the most bullish thing that could happen to Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin is trading at $94,671 at time of writing.

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Meme coins ranked among the most popular crypto narratives of 2024, creating a divide between crypto tokens. Bitcoin stands out among top crypto tokens with 125% year-to-date gains, and the meme coin category, or the “other tokens”, hit a key milestone, crossing a market capitalization of $100 billion. 

Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE), the top three meme coins, have erased between 11% and 13% of their value in the past week. Bitcoin consolidates close to $95,000, nearly 12% below its all-time high of $108,353. 

Bitcoin vs meme coins, most popular narrative of 2024

Meme coins captured the attention of most crypto traders and emerged as a popular narrative this year. A CoinGecko report updated on Monday notes that the meme coin narrative captured a combined 30.67% of global investor interest. 

The report highlights that almost a third of crypto narrative interest this year was focused on speculative gains from meme coins. Traders placed a lower emphasis on fundamentals and turned their attention and capital towards dog and cat-related meme coins, pop culture references and internet personality-themed meme tokens.

Meme coins have enjoyed a 6% year-on-year increase in interest from crypto market participants. While Bitcoin garnered institutional attention and capital allocation following the approval of Spot BTC ETFs in the US, four meme coin-based trends ranked among the top 20 narratives in crypto. 

Solana (SOL), Base, Artificial intelligence and cat-themed meme coins garnered between 14% and 8% of interest among crypto narratives. 

With meme coins cementing their place as a trending token category and trending this cycle, catalysts like institutional allocation and ETF approval could pave the way for further gains for holders. 

Base, Solana, XRP memes dominate over blue-chip memes in speculative gains 

In the first week of December, XRP-based meme coins yielded gains for holders amidst rising relevance and demand for the XRP Ledger and its native token XRP. Similarly, Solana and Base-based meme coins have secured a rank in the top 20 cryptocurrency narratives of the year, dominating the popularity of blue-chip meme coins. 

Dogecoin, SHIB and PEPE are typically considered blue-chip memes, with a market capitalization between $7 and $46 billion, as seen on CoinGecko. The top 3 tokens in the meme coin category observed a spike in active addresses and activity from traders within the first two weeks of December. 

In the last seven days, the top 3 tokens have erased double-digit value, according to CoinGecko data. Several other meme tokens have accumulated double-digit losses, barring Pudgy Penguins (PENGU). 

Institutional meme coin holdings tripled this year 

The wave of meme coin adoption drove institutions to tripe their holdings in the category. From February to March 2024, institutional investors’ spot holdings of memecoins climbed from $62.5 million to $204.8 million. 

This marks a 226% surge, a significant spike in interest in the memecoin market, according to Bybit’s report on institutional investment in meme coins.

In the Bybit report, Eugene Cheung, Head of Institutions of Bybit, is quoted as saying:

“Our report ‘Beyond the Hype’ shows that institutional and retail investors are actively leveraging the opportunities presented by the memecoin market. The strategic agility of institutions and the dynamic management by retail investors reflect a sophisticated engagement with these assets. We invite everyone to delve into the full report to understand these important dynamics better.”

Dogecoin ETF likely in 2025?

Rising institutional adoption has raised questions about the likelihood of approval from the U.S. financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, for meme coin ETFs. Nate Geraci, President of ETFStore expressed shock that an issuer has yet to file for a Dogecoin ETF, both in and outside of the U.S.

Geraci believes the only possible downside of such a filing would be that it would mark a futile attempt and end up as a marketing expense for an issuer. The President of the ETFStore commented on the “DOGE” ticker since it is the ticker for the largest meme coin and would likely hold the highest relevance and demand among issuers in the future, 

As the SEC greenlights the Bitcoin-Ethereum hybrid ETF, DOGE traders have hopes for a Dogecoin ETF approval in 2025. 

Bitcoin and meme coin divide runs deep

Ruslan Lienkha, Chief of markets at YouHodler told Crypto.news in an exclusive interview:

“Dogecoin’s recent performance appears primarily speculative, driven by its association with Elon Musk, rather than any underlying fundamentals, as it still lacks substantial real-world use cases. However, a potential utility could develop in the future.”

Lienkha comments on what divides Dogecoin and similar meme coins from Bitcoin. While Bitcoin has gained acceptance as “digital gold” and hedge against the devaluation of a fiat currency, Dogecoin and the like are considered speculative tokens. 

The Bitcoin and meme coin divide runs deep and could influence the approval of a meme coin ETF, further investment from institutional investors and retail participation in the category in the second leg of the bull market. 

Typically, a drawdown in Bitcoin ushers a steeper and market-wide correction, wiping recent gains from meme coins and hitting the market capitalization of the category negatively. The correlation with Bitcoin could continue to drag down meme coins, and in every instance, the largest crypto crashes or reacts to a market-moving event during this cycle.