Elon Musk Causes Meme Coin Craze by Changing His Name to Gorklon Rust
Date: 2025-05-05 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
Elon Musk has once again caused a cryptocurrency spike: On May 4, he changed his X profile name and avatar to “gorklon rust.” This immediately sparked a wave of interest in Gork-related tokens, with many prices rising by 100% in just 24 hours.
The Gork account, a satirical take on xAI’s Grok AI, quickly went viral for its cheeky and caustic responses. At the time of publication, it already has over 116,000 followers. The character has long been part of crypto culture on social media, and any mention of him provokes speculation in the meme coin market.
The market reaction was not long in coming. Within hours of Musk's profile change, dozens of new tokens using the Gork name appeared. The New XAI Gork token (ticker GORK) stood out, with its market cap quickly surpassing $62 million. It took third place in the CoinGecko trending chart, showing a sharp rise.
Musk himself commented on the name change in a joking manner, writing:
"Hey, Gork, changed my avatar to yours. What do you think?"
The response was not long in coming - the Gork account responded in the same spirit:
"Normal. But why copy my entire face?"
However, as often happens with short-term pumps, the excitement began to fade almost as quickly as it appeared. Within an hour of the surge, the quotes of some of the meme coins began to fall rapidly, falling by tens of percent.
Interestingly, back in March, journalist Colin Wu reported on Grok's strange activity: after a series of leading questions, the AI suggested creating a meme coin called GrokCoin and even published the contract address. This was the first wave of hype around a possible "official" token inspired by Musk's AI project.
Thus, another Internet joke from Elon Musk has once again led to real financial consequences in the market. Although the volatility of such assets is extremely high, interest in them from crypto enthusiasts is not weakening.
