Elon Musk said on Friday that his companies would never create a cryptocurrency, but that hasn’t stopped a surge in interest for tokens with the same name as his latest creation.
Over the weekend, Musk and X, formerly Twitter, announced Grok, a large-language model built by the Musk-led xAI that’s meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Immediately, the price of XAI, a token with a similar name to the company behind Grok, shot up 175%, before falling back to Earth. The token was trading down 1.6% on Monday morning following the initial excitement.
Opportunistic crypto traders over the weekend rushed to create more than 400 tokens linked to Grok—some with pictures of Musk—that garnered more than $10 million in market cap, according to CoinDesk.
In a Friday post on X, Musk tried to clarify his stance on cryptocurrencies, writing: “To be super clear, none of my companies will ever create a crypto token.”
Anyone can create a cryptocurrency, and major news events often spur the creation of new tokens, although many turn out to be scams. Developers behind at least 10 of the Grok tokens have already rugpulled, leading to about $1 million in losses for those who invested, according to CoinDesk.
Musk has in the past supported cryptocurrencies, including the memecoin Dogecoin, whose price often soars when the billionaire mentions it on X. His electric vehicle company Tesla also accepts Dogecoin as payment.
Although at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal in May, Musk offered a more cautious approach.
“I’m not advising anyone to buy crypto or bet the farm on Dogecoin,” he said at the time.