In brief
- Elon Musk jokingly posted on X that his Shiba Inu dog Floki is returning as the CEO of X, formerly Twitter.
- It prompted a 27% price increase for Ethereum meme coin Floki, which was recently at a $829 million market cap.
- Traders are hoping that Musk will continue to post about Floki, as he did in 2023, which led to an even larger pump.
X owner Elon Musk took to the platform to share an AI-generated video of his Shiba Inu dog Floki, jokingly crowning the pup the CEO of the social media site. In turn, the Ethereum-based meme coin Floki jumped in value by nearly 27%.
Musk is well known for pumping the value of O.G. meme coin Dogecoin with his comments, but his social media posts have also moved the needle for Floki in the past.
Back in 2023, when Musk stepped down as CEO of then-Twitter, he jokingly posted that Floki was the new CEO of the company, following the tweet with a series of other posts about Floki. It prompted a 146% spike in Floki’s market cap to $557 million, according to CoinGecko.
“Floki is back on the job as X CEO,” Musk posted on Monday, with an AI-generated video of a Shiba Inu dog saying, “Numbers, numbers, numbers, is this working? Yay.”
The post has led to feverish speculation surrounding the Floki meme coin, with many hoping that history will repeat itself and that Musk will continue to post about Floki.
“If I remember correctly, he went on a rampage posting several ‘Floki as X CEO’ tweets and memes shortly after, and was even excitedly talking about how it’s cool that his dog was running Twitter on mainstream TV,” pseudonymous trader Bonk Guy wrote on X. “[It] would be ironic if we get a repeat! Time is a flat circle, as they say.”
At the time of writing, Floki has jumped by nearly 27% on the day to a price of $0.000086 and an $829 million market cap, with some claiming that it’s a sign that Musk is losing his pull. Others pushed back, stating that Floki is simply a larger asset than last time, thus making its price harder to move from a single social media post.
Musk has a fabled history of pumping meme coins with posts on X.
Floki, of course, was first created when Musk started posting photos of his then-puppy and named him Floki. When he jokingly appointed Floki as the “Twitter CEO,” it also helped pump his longtime favorite Dogecoin, adding $500 million to its market cap in just 15 minutes.
Musk’s social media and public appearances have routinely caused movements in Dogecoin over the past several years. His 2021 appearance on the popular U.S. TV show “Saturday Night Live” was touted as an event that’d skyrocket the token’s price. Instead, it led to a drop in price and disappointed many investors.
Fast-forward to the present day, with the advent of token launchpads like Pump.fun, and almost every post from the Tesla founder is being turned into a crypto token.
After Musk’s most recent Floki post, for example, someone created a coin via Pump.fun called “Flōki CEO of X” with the token ticker FLŌKI, which peaked at a $423,000 market cap, according to DEX Screener. That’s not to mention the countless other tokens created across various other launchpads and blockchains that failed to gain significant traction.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/344987/not-just-dogecoin-elon-musk-pumps-floki-ai-shiba-inu-video
