Tesla CEO Elon Musk has inadvertently helped the price of a little-known cryptocurrency surge by over 1,100% in a short amount of time after tweeting out there will be a “MarsCoin,” following up on a suggestion on social media.
After saying he would pay major Dogecoin holders to dump their DOGE, a user on the microblogging platform Twitter suggested that he should develop his own cryptocurrency which he could allocate time and support to, to which Elon replied he would do so “only if necessary.”
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of leading crypto trading platform Binance, then suggested it was necessary and that it should be called MarsCoin, a plan Musk agreed with saying “there will definitely be a MarsCoin.”
As Decrypt reports, Musk agreeing seemingly helped revive a little-known cryptocurrency with that same name – MarsCoin (MARS) – that was developed back in 2014 and was trading beneath $0.20 for years.
After Musk’s tweets, its price jumped to over $2.5 before plunging back down to under $1, as warnings were issued that the cryptocurrency is not affiliated with the CEO of Tesla in any way. Data shows MARS is only trading on little-known exchanges as well.
The price surge was aided by the token’s poor liquidity, with data showing MARS/BTC trading pairs on exchanges like Folgory have trading volumes of around $15,000 in the last 24-hour period. Its pool liquidity makes it much easier for large orders to move the price in any direction.
MarsCoin was developed with the goal of funding the first human settlement on Mars: a goal that is shared with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. Its website clarifies it is not affiliated with the entrepreneur, and merely focuses on its original plan.
Featured image via Pixabay.
