The world\u2019s richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to \u201cKekius Maximus\u201d.<\/p>\n
The tech mogul \u2013 and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump \u2013 offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog \u2013 a meme that has been used by far-right groups.<\/p>\n
The move has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin \u2013 a digital currency inspired by internet memes \u2013 that shares the same name skyrocketing.<\/p>\n
In the past, Mr Musk has influenced crypto prices with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he had any involvement in this particular memecoin.<\/p>\n
\u201cKekius\u201d appears to be a Latinisation of \u201ckek\u201d, a word roughly equivalent to \u201claugh out loud\u201d popularised by gamers but now often associated with the alt right.<\/p>\n
\u201cKek\u201d is also the name of the ancient Egyptian god of darkness, who is sometimes depicted with the head of a frog.<\/p>\n
Many people would link \u201cMaximus\u201d to the name of Russell Crowe\u2019s heroic character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius.<\/p>\n
Mr Musk\u2019s new profile image depicts Pepe in Roman military dress holding what appears to be a game console.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The world\u2019s richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to \u201cKekius Maximus\u201d. The tech mogul \u2013 and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump \u2013 offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image which depicts the character Pepe the Frog \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}