If You Invested $1,000 In Pepe Coin When Elon Musk Shared A Meme Earlier This Year, Here's How Much You'd Have Today

The price of PEPE coin PEPE/USD is soaring Tuesday after billionaire Elon Musk changed his name on social media platform X and his profile picture to an image of Pepe the Frog playing video games.

While Musk's X changes sparked optimism for the meme coin, this wasn't the first time the billionaire supported Pepe the Frog memes and images on social media. Here's a look back.

What Happened: Pepe coin, based on the popular Pepe the Frog meme, launched in mid-April 2023 and gained interest from the cryptocurrency community. The number of holders quickly grew thanks to the meme's built-in popularity and name recognition.

While Pepe coin's first year was memorable, the cryptocurrency’s second year included a listing on Robinhood, providing more accessibility for investors to buy it. The coin hit a new all-time high in December, following many cryptocurrencies that hit new all-time highs after the 2024 presidential election.

The Pepe the Frog meme was created by artist Matt Furie. Because the meme is so well known, being used by the world's richest person and most followed account on X could help strengthen interest in the cryptocurrency.

Musk changed his name to Kekius Maximus on X in late December 2024 while changing his profile picture to an image that looks to have combined Pepe the Frog with a gladiator playing video games. The move led to the creation of a new meme crypto Kekius Maximus KEKIUS/USD, while also leading to Pepe trading up more than 11% higher over the last 24 hours at the time of writing.

Musk also tweeted he would reach level 80 in hardcore PoE, a post related to the game Path of Exile 2 that he likes to play.

Kek is a term used in gaming culture that often translates to lol or haha, based on translations from popular games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft. There is also the Egyptian god Kek, who has been portrayed as Pepe the Frog since the 2016 election, as reported by Dictionary.com.

The recent name change and profile picture change is not the first time Musk used Pepe the Frog images on X. The billionaire has shared several memes throughout 2024 involving Pepe and responded to many Pepe memes.

On March 13, 2024, Musk used a meme featuring Pepe the Frog to explain the First and Second Amendments, as reported by Coinmarketcap. This may have been his first use of a Pepe the Frog meme by Musk on X. This could have been an entry point for investors looking to buy Pepe based on Musk's potential future support.

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Investing $1000 in PEPE Coin: Pepe coin traded at a high of $0.000009332 on March 13, 2024. A $1,000 investment at the time could have bought 107,158,165.45 PEPE.

Based on a current price of $0.00002047 for PEPE at the time of writing, the $1,000 investment would be worth $2,193.53 today. This represents a potential gain of 119.4% over the last nine months.

For comparison, the same $1,000 invested in Musk's favorite cryptocurrency Dogecoin DOGE/USD or the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, which tracks the S&P 500, would not have performed as well.

The $1,000 invested in Dogecoin would be worth $1,829.74 today, up 83% over the same period. The $1,000 invested in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust would be worth $1,129.76 today, up 13.0% over the same period.

Benzinga previously shared how investing in Dogecoin in April 2019 or July 2020 when Musk famously mentioned Dogecoin in comments and made his first meme post could have turned into substantial profits.

There is no guarantee that Musk will make a complete switch away from Doge memes to Pepe memes and keep the momentum in the cryptocurrency going, but the crypto sector will likely be closely watching in 2025.

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