- Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X this week. This has caused the price of some X-branded crypto tokens to skyrocket.
- One token saw a 1,200% rally after Musk’s announcement, even though the project was shut down in May.
- New X-branded tokens have also appeared on crypto exchanges following the rebrand of Musk’s company.
Opportunistic crypto traders are trying to draw attention to Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand.
After the billionaire CEO announced Over the weekend his social media platform will be renamed “X,” cryptocurrencies with X-related names have sprung up, and new tokens have popped up on decentralized exchanges.
New tokens include those that seem more legitimate, as well as those that look like the pump-and-dump places often seen in the sector. However, traders did not seem to distinguish between the two and were seen piling anything with the “X” brand to capitalize on possible profits.
CoinDesk saw one token rise 1,200% in the 24 hours following Twitter’s rebrand — despite the shutdown of its related project in May.
Another token that saw a sharp rally, called “AI-X,” had a similar logo to Musk’s company SpaceX. Then there was something called “Deus Ex” — a phrase tweeted by Musk this week — that saw a 2,600% jump, according to CoinDesk data.
On Sunday, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Confirmed Twitter’s pivot away from the well-known bird branding.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered on audio, video, messaging, and payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino tweeted. “Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’ve only begun to imagine.”
Meanwhile, earlier this month Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg introduced his own rival to Twitter, called Threads, which has the advantage of bringing in new users via Instagram. While there was a lot of hype surrounding Threads’ launch, its survival will depend on its ability to attract the same amount of advertisers as Twitter, says Ali Mogharabi, senior equity analyst at Morningstar.
“As far as initial impressions go, the timing of the threads is notable because it followed Musk’s latest restrictions on Twitter,” he told Insider in a recent interview. “But it remains to be seen if all the frustrated Twitter users will go to the threads and actually stay there.”