Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a long-time admirer of Dogecoin, sent a tweet to McDonald’s on January 25 in an attempt to persuade the fast-food company to accept DOGE as payment. McDonald’s responded by claiming it would only make the move if Tesla also accepted a currency called “Grimacecoin,” which didn’t exist at the time. While McDonald’s answer was obviously a joke, opportunists swiftly produced a cryptocurrency based on the purple blob mascot employed by McDonald’s for marketing and advertising, as well as a slew of bogus Grimace-named coins.
Several cryptocurrencies trading under the name Grimacecoin appeared shortly after the tweet and quickly rose in value on multiple blockchains. Dex Screener, a tool that monitors token activity on various decentralized exchanges, discovered that this token was trading in some form. Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, Ethereum, Avalanche, and Fantom were among these networks.
The Grimacecoin on BSC’s PancakeSwap, which soared 285,000 percent in its first 24 hours of existence before slowing down, was the largest gainer of this batch.
People from all around the world raced to the cryptocurrency marketplace hours afterwards to produce bogus Grimace tokens. It’s worth mentioning that at the time of the tweet, there was no Grimace Coin in the crypto realm. McDonald’s attempted to advertise the notion as a joke, but some spotted an opportunity and began producing counterfeit coins bearing the same name.
ccyg zAccording to Coindesk, one of these newly generated coins began trading at $0.0007 (approximately Rs. 0.05) and peaked at $2 (about Rs. 150) before plunging to 60 cents. Its market worth has increased to about $2 million (roughly Rs. 15 crore). Another Grimacecoin gained 56,000 percent in value, surpassing 1,000 holders and a market cap of $6 million (approximately Rs. 45 crore).
https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/1486115285983805444
While some members of the meme coin community are ecstatic about the new development, others are urging caution due to prior meme currency-related scams. The so-called Squidgame Cash, which went bankrupt last year after its founders allegedly stole $2.5 million (approximately Rs. 19 crore) in Binance currency tokens, was one of the most notorious examples of a meme coin gone bad.
The coin, which was inspired by the smash Netflix program Squid Game, has seen a 300,000 percent increase in value since its launch. However, its entire market cap was wiped out in under 15 minutes, prompting many in the cryptocurrency world to issue Grimace coin warnings.
Meanwhile, the value of DOGE has increased by nearly 7% since Musk’s McDonald’s tweet on January 26.