As the cryptocurrency industry matures and institutional adoption increases, digital assets, although still volatile, and slowly moving toward being more akin to traditional, buy-and-hold investments.
One subsection of the industry, however, is still prone to incredible amounts of volatility, which can see relatively small investments turn into fortunes overnight — or even in the span of a couple of hours. The subsection in question is, to little surprise, meme coins.
In one such instance, a savvy trader loaded up on millions of Kekius Maximus (KM), purchased for just a little over $4,000. Quite soon, the trade paid off — in a big and unexpected way.
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Per data retrieved by Finbold from Solscan on December 31, the account in question made two transactions, roughly 12 hours before the time of publication.
The first saw the purchase of 9.9 million KM worth $2,246 at the time, while the second trade was slightly smaller, encompassing the acquisition of 8.2 million Kekius Maximus for $2,566. All in all, the trader spent $4,360 to purchase 18.15 million KM tokens.
A stunt by Elon Musk made Kekius Maximus go parabolic
Kekius Maximus is a riff on Pepe The Frog — in this instance, wearing Roman armor as a reference to the movie ‘Gladiator’. While variations of Pepe are quite popular memes and enjoy a lot of staying power, a unique catalyst drove the price surge.
Namely, roughly nine hours after the purchase, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) noted crypto advocate, and owner of social media site X, changed his account name to Kekius Maximus.
In short order, KM prices soared by 13,362% — up from just $0.00040 to $0.05385, although prices have since receded to $0.02658. Still, the price of Kekius Maximus is still trading at levels some 6,545% higher than it was before Musk’s show of support
At the time of writing, the Kekius Maximus held by this address was worth $482,427 — at peak prices, it would have been worth somewhere in the ballpark of $977,377.
Naturally, as the trade was so well-timed, X users immediately began speculating whether or not this was a stroke of luck or the action of an insider, perhaps even Musk himself.
Unlike most accounts that make such significant profits on meme coins, this address has been making a reasonable number of trades since being opened — meaning that it is unlikely to be an automated system.
Featured image via Shutterstock
