$KEKIUS Shakes Off Elon Musk Name Change, Bounces Back Over 90%

Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS), the memecoin seemingly "pumped" by Elon Musk earlier this week before the tech titan abandoned the persona a day later, appears to have overcome the "abandonment" to surge once more and continue to be a major gainer in the past week.

Dubbed as "Elon's Pepe," KEKIUS on Ethereum is up nearly 94% in the last 24 hours, a day after it plunged significantly following Musk's X name and profile photo change.

$KEKIUS Gets Back Up After Musk Turns Away

There are a few other tokens based on Kekius Maximus that popped up this week, but KEKIUS on Ethereum was the memecoin that saw a stellar jump of over 1,200% after Musk changed his name and profile picture into Kekius Maximus.

While the token remains volatile, as is the case with other memecoins, KEKIUS has shown significant resilience in the past day even after the Tesla CEO decided to revert back to his real name and profile photo on X.

Seemingly shocked by Musk's swift change of heart, the token plummeted over 54% on New Year's Day. However, it has since recovered and as of early Friday, remains in the green.

In the last seven days, the crypto meme token increased by a staggering 3,600%, outperforming the entire global cryptocurrency market by an extremely wide margin.

Who is Kekius Maximus?

AI tool Grok conceived the name earlier in December, which appears to be a combination of the following terms and names:

• Kek – The term "kek" is an evolved version of the popular internet acronym of laugh out loud, "LOL." In history, Kek is an ancient god of darkness in Egypt, depicted as a being with the head of a frog.
• Maximus Decimus Meridius – Maximus was a Roman general in the "Gladiator" movie that was portrayed by award-winning actor Russell Crowe.
• Pepe the Frog – Pepe is one of the beloved characters in Matt Furie's popular cartoon, "Boy's Club," which is also the inspiration of many other meme tokens, including the multi-billion-dollar PEPE token.

According to the description of Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, the persona, which Musk took on during New Year's Eve, is not only the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and the owner of X, but is also a "servant to the vision of human progress, father of many innovations, husband to the idea of interplanetary life."

Can $KEKIUS Survive Without Musk?

So far, it appears that the KEKIUS memecoin is surviving without Musk, considering how it saw a bigger surge than its plunge following the tech billionaire's name and photo change.

"Kekius on ETH is looking like it's going to a billion, and then to billions," said Rundown Media CEO Kiarash Behain.

However, there are also some who believe there is a "misleading" narrative around Kekius Maximus memecoin creators who have been claiming Musk supposedly endorsed the tokens.

"Nothing wrong with making gains off crypto memecoins, but this narrative is misleading. KEKIUS is not DOGE 2.0 and here's no official endorsement of any sorts," said a concerned user.

Notably, Musk did not specify that he was endorsing KEKIUS and other tokens based off of the Grok-conceived character in mentions of Kekius Maximus. He did post about the persona multiple times throughout December, but did not specifically endorse any token.