decrypt.co
Bitcoin surged to an all-time high price late Tuesday as President-Elect Donald Trump’s projected win took shape, bringing the rest of the crypto market with it. But one of the biggest gainers over the past day might be unexpected—it’s from an Elon Musk-themed Telegram tap-to-earn game.
X, the token of Telegram game X Empire, is now up 53% over the last 24 hours per data from CoinMarketCap, at a current price of $0.000073. The token, minted on The Open Network (TON), blasted as high as $0.000096 late Wednesday, bouncing back from an all-time low of $0.000033 on November 3.
In the process, X Empire became the most-traded token on The Open Network besides Toncoin (TON) itself, racking up $316 million in trading volume during the span. That’s a 356% spike compared to the previous 24-hour span, and nearly doubles runner-up Notcoin (NOT) with $159 million trading volume during the same span.
What’s driving the surge? X Empire pays unofficial tribute to Elon Musk, and originally launched as “Musk Empire” over the summer. While the game quickly shifted branding, the tap-to-earn game retained its focus on upgrading the attributes and businesses of a cartoonish rendition of Musk, ahead of its token launch and airdrop in October.
In the real world, Musk has been a prominent backer of Donald Trump, and threw $130 million behind the Republican candidate’s campaign via the tech exec's America PAC. Musk also appeared at Trump rallies over the last couple weeks in the run-up to Election Day.
Other coins linked to Musk have also surged of late, particularly Dogecoin, the original meme coin and a favorite of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. DOGE is up 73% over the last 30 days, in part due to the buzz around a prospective government agency—called the Department of Government Efficiency (or D.O.G.E.)—that Trump said that Musk could run.
Overnight, Musk claimed “record usage” of Twitter (aka X) amid the election fracas, sharing a chart showing data from “U.S. hourly mobile seconds on Tuesdays.” It’s limited framing, however, and the chart only shows the last few weeks’ worth of data.