Elon Musk AI project inspired memecoin ‘Grok’ falls 74% on creator scam claim

The price of a memecoin drawing its namesake from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence project “Grok” plummeted over 70% after blockchain sleuth ZachXBT alleged the token’s social media account was recycled from a scam token project.

In a Nov. 13 X (formerly Twitter) post, ZachXBT shared screenshots showing various social media accounts and websites tied to the Grok (GROK) token were repurposed from old projects — including an abandoned memecoin project called ANDY — which has significantly declined from its all-time high.

Not that people in this space will care but @GROKERC20 $GROK was created by a scammer.

Same exact X/Twitter account has been reused for at least one other scam.

X/Twitter ID: 1690060301465714692 pic.twitter.com/iKu7zb6YeS

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) November 13, 2023

In the five hours following ZachXBT’s post, memecoin enthusiasts watched as GROK plunged 74% from its all-time high of $0.027 to as low as $0.007. Its price has since retracted to $0.011, per DexTools data.

GROK’s price plunged more than 70% in five hours following ZachXBT’s allegations. Source: DexTools

In a follow-up post, ZachXBT pointed to an Etherscan transaction showing GROK’s team sent roughly $1.7 million worth of the token to a burn address in a bid to reduce supply and restore confidence in the token.

The Grok developer burned 90 million GROK tokens after the token’s price plummeted. Source: Etherscan

The X account for the GROK token claimed in a Nov. 14 post that the development team had burned all of the tokens from the deployer address, some 180 million GROK worth roughly $2 million at current prices.

all tokens from the deployer wallet has been 100% burnt.https://t.co/mNr48MoFryhttps://t.co/VSERX5v9qL

GROK GROK

— GROK (@GROKERC20) November 13, 2023

Related: Elon throws AI-generated insults at GPT-4 after OpenAI CEO mocks Grok

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

The memecoin was launched on Nov. 5, the same day Elon Musk announced his supposed competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Grok AI. Over the course of the following week, its value increased 33,650% as memecoin traders rushed to capitalize on the hype.