McDonald’s Double Downs On Elon Musk Happy Meal Proposition, Mock Grimacecoin Surges 285,000%

A mock cryptocurrency coin created on Tuesday shot up over 285,000% after an exchange of tweets between McDonald’s (MCD) and multibillionaire Elon Musk.

Early Tuesday morning, in an attempt to get McDonald’s on board with Dogecoin payments, Elon Musk said in a tweet to McDonald’s that he would eat a Happy Meal on live TV if the burger chain would accept the coin for payment at its restaurants.

While his legion of 71.6 million followers applauded the idea, McDonald’s was silent on the proposition until mid-evening Tuesday, when it jokingly replied back to Musk, “Only if Tesla accepts gimacecoin,” referencing its Grimace mascot that is modeled after a tastebud.

While McDonald’s doesn’t currently accept any cryptocurrency for payment at its restaurants, Tesla does accept Dogecoin for payment on certain merchandise.

The tweet by McDonald’s caused at least 10 grimacecoins to be created on the Binance Smart Chain network, where anyone can start a smart contract and issue tokens for just a few cents to be traded at a moment’s notice, according to Coindesk.

Upon the creation of the grimacecoin, the currency began trading at $0007, before spiking to $2 in the Asia morning markets, Coindesk reported. Another grimacecoin was trading at only $0.00000193, also in the Asia morning hours, Coindesk said.

This is not the first time that a tweet from Musk has caused a stir and sparked new cryptocurrencies. In October, the Tesla CEO announced that he had gotten a Shiba Inu puppy and named it Floki. A number of Floki-inspired currencies were created as a result.

As of Wednesday premarket hours, shares of McDonald's were trading at $252.25, up $1.57, or 0.63%.