Cointelegraph
Tom Mitchelhill
Written by Tom Mitchelhill,Former Staff Writer
Ana Paula Pereira
Reviewed by Ana Paula Pereira,Staff Editor

Memecoin trader briefly becomes millionaire off throwaway Elon Musk X gag

A crypto trader turned $10,000 into $1.3 million with a well-timed purchase of the TROLL token after Elon Musk updated his bio to “Chief Troll Officer” on X.

Memecoin trader briefly becomes millionaire off throwaway Elon Musk X gag
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One lucky trader has seemingly turned $10,000 into just over $1 million less than 10 days after purchasing the Troll (TROLL) memecoin just moments after Elon Musk changed his bio on X (formerly Twitter) to “Chief Troll Officer.”

Etherscan data cited by blockchain data provider LookOnChain shows the trader converted a total of 4.3 Ether (ETH) — worth approximately $10,000 at the time — into 19 trillion TROLL tokens.

On the same day, the trader sold 9 trillion TROLL tokens to cover their buy-in, holding the remaining 10 trillion tokens, which, at one point, were worth $1.34 million.

The price has fallen since then, but the TROLL stack is still worth a staggering $864,000 at current prices, equating to an 8,540% gain from his initial capital.

The trader’s holdings are worth $864,000 at current prices. Source: DeBank

TROLL was initially launched in April 2023 and, like all memecoins, experienced a brief price surge before retracing to near its launch price. That all changed on Jan. 9 when Musk changed his X bio and sent the token surging over 150,000% in three days.

Troll launched to little fanfare in April 2023. Source: DexScreener

In 2021, a single well-timed Musk tweet had the power to send his then-favorite memecoin, Dogecoin (DOGE), skyrocketing.

Related: Dogecoin investors accuse Elon Musk of insider trading in amended class-action lawsuit

It happened again when a non-affiliated memecoin drawing its namesake from Musk’s AI project, dubbed “Grok,” suddenly became one of the largest memecoins in space.

At its peak price of $0.027 on Nov. 13, Grok (GROK) commanded a market capitalization of nearly $200 million, making it one of the largest new memecoins in the current cycle.

Those who came late to the GROK hype were burned after an X post from blockchain sleuth ZachXBT revealed that various social media accounts and websites tied to Grok were repurposed from old projects.

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