Elon Musk has earned many titles – TechnoKing, Dogefather, and lately even Kekius Maximus – all thanks to his habit of turning casual jokes into market-moving events. In the wild world of cryptocurrency, few things are as absurd (or as entertaining) as watching Elon Musk’s tweets send meme coins to the moon. In this blog, we’ll take a lighthearted journey through Musk’s history with the crypto market and how his ever-evolving public persona – from early Dogecoin shilling to his recent “Groklon Rust” alter-ego – has influenced token prices in ways that are equal parts hilarious and unbelievable.

We’ll start with Elon’s early endorsements of Dogecoin in 2020–2021 that caused DOGE to surge. Then we’ll cover his subsequent forays into other meme tokens like Floki (inspired by his very own Shiba Inu puppy) and the more recent Kekius Maximus token on Ethereum. Along the way, we’ll sprinkle in charts of DOGE, FLOKI, and Kekius Maximus showing how their prices reacted right when Elon tweeted or referenced them – complete with tweet screenshots as annotations for that real-time flavor. And of course, we have to talk about how Elon’s social media persona transformed over time, from the self-proclaimed “Dogefather” to the mysterious “Groklon Rust”, all while driving crypto fans and investors into a frenzy. So strap in – it’s time to explore the meme-fueled rollercoaster that is Elon Musk’s meme coin influence!

The Rise of Dogecoin and the “Dogefather”

It all began with a joke – or rather, a one-word tweet. In December 2020, Elon Musk tweeted “One word: Doge” and casually lit the spark that would ignite Dogecoin’s explosive growth. At the time, Dogecoin was a quirky joke-cryptotrading for fractions of a penny. But Elon’s tweet – just 5 characters long – was like catnip for meme traders. Dogecoin’s price immediately jumped about 20%, and the term “Dogecoin” started trending everywhere. Little did we know, this was only the opening act of Musk’s Dogecoin saga.

Dogecoin’s price from Dec 2020 through Feb 2021, with Elon Musk’s key tweets marked. Notice the initial bump after his Dec 2020 “One word: Doge” tweet, and the much larger spike in late January/early February 2021 following a flurry of Dogecoin tweetsreuters.comreuters.com.

Over the next few months, Elon Musk turned his Twitter account into a Dogecoin hype machine. He posted memes of Doge, proclaimed himself the “Dogefather”, and wrote quirky lines like “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto.” Each tweet was like pouring rocket fuel into the Doge rocket. In late January 2021, amid a frenzy of Reddit-fueled trading, Musk’s tweets (including a Lion King meme of him lifting Simba-Doge) helped propel Dogecoin up over 800% in 24 hours, at one pointstartupdaily.net. The chart above shows how Dogecoin went from under a penny to about $0.08 by early February 2021 – a mind-boggling surge largely attributed to the “Elon Musk tweet effect”.

By spring 2021, Musk’s Doge tweets had become so influential that “Dogecoin to the Moon” felt less like a meme and more like an actual plan. When Elon was slated to host Saturday Night Live in May 2021, he even joked on Twitter with a promo: “The Dogefather SNL May 8.” Investors piled in, anticipating a Dogecoin mention on TV. Doge’s price ran up to ~73 cents ahead of the showbinance.com – a jaw-dropping increase from just ~$0.004 at the start of the year. (For context, that’s well over a 100x gain – many early Doge holders literally became millionaires from a meme coin!) Although Dogecoin did get a mention on SNL (Musk jokingly called it “a hustle,” after which it dumped in price), the legend of the Dogefather was born. Elon’s mix of sincere enthusiasm and tongue-in-cheek humor had effectively turned a joke currency into a multibillion-dollar asset, at least for a time.

It’s hard to overstate how absurd this was: one moment Musk tweets a Shiba Inu meme or a one-liner, and the next moment Dogecoin’s market cap balloons by billions. The man even changed his Twitter bio to “Former CEO of Dogecoin” at one point, fully embracing the clownery. Through 2021, “Elon Musk Dogecoin tweet effect” became a known phenomenon – crypto markets would literally hinge on his every post. In short, Elon would meme, and Dogecoin would moon. It doesn’t get more 21st-century than that.

From Doge to Floki: A New Puppy, a New Meme Coin

Just when people thought the Musk-crypto saga couldn’t get any crazier, enter Floki – not a coin at first, but Elon’s pet Shiba Inu puppy. In June 2021, Musk tweeted “My Shiba Inu will be named Floki.” That single sentence sent the crypto world into a tizzy. Within minutes, opportunistic developers created Floki Inu tokens out of thin air. (Why waste time? This is crypto – if Elon jokes about it, someone will mint it!) Sure enough, the mere announcement of the dog’s future name caused related tokens to spike. Later, on September 12, 2021, Elon posted an irresistible photo of his adorable asleep puppy with the caption “Floki has arrived”. The result? An avalanche of Floki-themed coins went parabolic.

Floki Inu’s price in September 2021. The vertical dashed line marks Elon’s “Floki has arrived” tweet, after which FLOKI’s price skyrocketed. In the 24 hours following the tweet, obscure tokens like Shiba Floki soared nearly 1000%, and the main Floki Inu coin jumped over 50%ndtv.comndtv.com.

The chart tells the story: Floki Inu’s price was relatively flat (and very low) before mid-September. Then Elon unleashes puppy pics on Twitter, and bam! – the coin’s value more than doubles that daycapital.com, and kept climbing for a week. According to news reports, one micro-cap token named Shiba Floki rose 958% within 24 hours of the tweetndtv.com, and Floki Inu itself hit an all-time high (at the time) after a 250% surgendtv.com. It’s as if Musk’s dog sneezed and crypto markets trembled. Even Dogecoin got a small bump just because the breed (Shiba Inu) is the Doge mascot.

The absurdity was not lost on anyone. Here was the world’s richest man posting a picture of his dog, and it spawned multiple new cryptocurrencies and collectively added hundreds of millions of dollars in market cap across “Floki” coins. It’s the kind of thing you’d put in a satire column, except it really happened. Crypto traders started monitoring Elon’s pet names and inside jokes as if they were financial indicators. Elon, for his part, seemed amused by the chaos. He didn’t explicitly endorse those spinoff coins, but his winking references were enough to send hordes of investors jumping in. By now, Musk’s reputation as a meme coin influencer was solid – he could tweet a meme of a rabbit, and a dozen “RabbitCoin” knock-offs would launch within hours (and probably pump if he so much as liked a related post!). The Floki episode perfectly highlighted the meme-driven frenzy that Musk can catalyze – equal parts hilarious and unsettling.

Enter KEKius Maximus: Elon’s New Meme Persona

Fast-forward to late 2024. Elon Musk had acquired Twitter (renaming it X), launched an AI startup, and was still firing off goofy tweets. But in December 2024, he took his meme game to a new level by changing his display name on X to “Kekius Maximus”. Yes, Elon temporarily rebranded himself as a Roman-esque meme warrior – complete with a profile picture of a buff Pepe the Frog in gladiator armor. Crypto Twitter went bananas over this. “Kekius” is a reference to the popular “kek” frog meme culture, and Maximus conjures the Gladiator hero. Leave it to Elon to mash up internet frog humor with ancient Rome and basically cosplay as a meme coin come to life.

Crucially, there actually was a meme token called Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS) that had just launched on Ethereum. By adopting that name and persona, Elon inadvertently (or maybe purposefully – who knows with him!) shone a giant spotlight on it. What happened next? You guessed it – KEKIUS token’s price went bonkers. Within hours of Musk’s name change, Kekius Maximus coin reportedly surged over 500%m.economictimes.com. Other related frog-themed tokens also jumped 200%+ simply because the Chief Twit had gone full Pepe. It was déjà vu of the Dogecoin effect, but with a brand-new coin. Imagine being a Kekius Maximus investor that week: one day it’s a random obscure token, the next day Elon Musk is literally role-playing as your coin on Twitter and its value is up 5x. Talk about an unexpected Christmas present!

Kekius Maximus token price in late Dec 2024 – early Jan 2025. When Elon embraced the “Kekius Maximus” persona (around Dec 31, 2024), the token’s price shot up dramatically. It later cooled off, but early buyers were able to ride a swift 5-6x gain during the Musk-fueled hype.

Elon’s “Kekius Maximus” phase was short-lived but memorable. He had a blast with it on X, sharing an AI-generated image of his warrior avatar “reaching level 80 in hardcore mode” (a joke about the game Path of Exile) and teasing journalists that they’d have to refer to him as Kekius Maximus in articlesm.economictimes.comm.economictimes.com. The crypto community ate it up. Pepe-themed coin holders cheered that the “Meme General” Elon was on their side, hoping for another pump. And indeed, even Pepe Coin saw a little uptick in price as Musk’s frog fascination made news. It was a surreal collision of internet culture and finance: Elon Musk morphing into a meme character he effectively made go viral. If Dogecoin made him the Dogefather, this made him something like the Frog Emperor of crypto.

Importantly, Musk never explicitly told anyone to buy Kekius Maximus coin – he just played the character. But in the zany memecoin casino, that’s all it took. Traders FOMO’d in simply because Elon had acknowledged the meme. The power of his persona was enough to move markets. By early January 2025, Musk moved on from the Kekius moniker (perhaps after he got his fill of level-80 Pepe jokes). The KEKIUS token settled back down (often these hype-driven spikes retrace once the spotlight fades). But the episode was a textbook case of “Elon Musk meme coin influence” – a masterclass in how a billionaire’s shitposting can create a very real market ripple.

Groklon Rust: When a Name Change Pumps Coins

You’d think by 2025 we’d all be desensitized to Musk’s antics. Nope! In May 2025, Elon did it again – this time dubbing himself “Groklon Rust” on X. The name puzzled everyone at first. It seemed to blend “Grok” (the AI chatbot from his xAI venture) with “Rust” (a programming language). Sounds nerdy enough… but of course, crypto traders immediately sniffed out an angle: it turned out “Groklon” was also the name of a meme coin on Solana (ticker: $GORK). Within minutes of Elon’s display name switch, the price of $GORK exploded upward, doubling overnightindiatimes.comindiatimes.com. Some sources even cited a 7000% increase for micro-cap tokens connected to “Gork”binance.com – essentially a feeding frenzy on anything remotely related to the term. Once again, a completely random coin got a massive boost simply because Elon Musk happened to align his persona with it.

Social media had a field day. Memes were made about Elon being the ultimate market maker – “he types, we moon.” Some users half-jokingly begged him to change his name back to Elon Musk because the volatility was too much. Others speculated on the meaning of “Groklon Rust,” trying to divine if it was a hint at some project or just Elon trolling. (Most likely the latter – Musk enjoys a bit of trolling, let’s be honest.) The Groklon Rust incident underscored that even without an explicit tweet promoting a coin, Elon’s behavior on social media is enough to send speculators into overdrive. He didn’t even mention $GORK directly – he merely took on a similar name – yet that was sufficient to trigger “meme coin madness” all over again.

At this point, entire market sectors move at the whim of one man’s memes. It’s absurd when you think about it: a hastily chosen display name or a joke about a pet can create or wipe out millions in value. Traditional finance folks look at this and probably pull their hair out. But to the crypto community, it’s par for the course in the Musk era. If anything, people have started trying to predict which meme Elon will embrace next. (Does his cat have a name? Does he even have a cat? Quick, someone find out – there might be a CatCoin pump incoming!)

One Man’s Memes, One Wild Market

Looking back at this saga, it’s clear that Elon Musk’s public persona has become a force of nature in crypto markets. He’s the meme king Midas – whatever he touches (or tweets about) turns to gold… at least temporarily. Dogecoin’s 2021 surge firmly established the template: Musk tweets, token rockets. Then came Floki Inu, proving the template works even when he’s indirectly involved (just getting a new dog was enough to launch a thousand “Floki” ships). With Kekius Maximus and Groklon Rust, Elon showed he could invent entire meme narratives and the market would still follow him down the rabbit hole.

It’s equal parts ridiculous and fascinating. On one hand, the notion that “memes move markets” has never been more true. We literally have meme charts now annotated with Elon’s tweets. On the other hand, it raises questions: How sustainable is this? (Not very, if you ask most analysts.) Could someone get badly burned chasing these Musk-fueled pumps? (Absolutely – many have.) Elon himself has urged caution at times, reminding people “cryptocurrency is promising, but please invest with caution!”reuters.com. But the allure of quick gains from an Elon tweet is often too strong to resist for many.

From a humor perspective, it’s undeniably entertaining. The world’s richest person shitposting dog memes and causing real-world financial tremors – that’s peak 2020s culture. Even Elon seems to find it funny; he often responds to the community’s memes about him with laughing emojis or more jokes. It’s a weird symbiosis: Elon entertains the crypto crowd; the crypto crowd provides Elon with feedback (and perhaps a sense of power, knowing he can move mountains – or at least coin prices – with a few characters).

For crypto veterans, Musk’s antics are a reminder of how sentiment-driven this market can be. Fundamentals? Sometimes thrown out the window. It’s a meme economy, and Musk is its emperor-god (or court jester, depending on your view). For newcomers, the key takeaway is this: be careful out there! Betting your life savings on the next Elon tweet is not a sound investment strategy. Enjoy the memes, maybe trade a small bag for fun, but don’t assume that “Elon said it, so it will go up forever.” As we saw with Dogecoin after SNL and with KEKIUS after the hype died, the Musk effect can be short-lived. What goes up fast can come down just as fast once the meme moves on.

At the end of the day, though, one thing is certain: Elon Musk isn’t going to stop meme-ing any time soon. Whether he’s calling himself “Mars Technoking” or posting cryptic anime images (yes, he’s done that too), the crypto world will be watching and ready to react. It’s absurd that we live in a reality where a billionaire’s late-night tweet can swing entire markets – but it’s also undeniably part of the charm (and chaos) of crypto. So here’s to Elon “Groklon Rust Kekius Dogefather” Musk – keep the memes coming, you magnificent troll. Just maybe warn us before you name your next pet, okay? The entire meme coin universe would like to prepare accordingly!