Musk is Back, This Time with Laser Eyes After Three Years
The U.S. election season is in full swing, bringing with it a wave of viral memes.
Today, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for the 2024 presidential election and will support Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for 2024. Following this announcement, meme coins such as $HERRIS, $KAMALA, and $KAMA saw short-term surges, catching the community’s attention.
At the same time, Elon Musk, a well-known figure in the crypto community and a supporter of the Trump camp, also stirred things up, driving a meme coin related to the election, “DMAGA,” to surge by over 50 times in a short period.
Early Morning Avatar Change Drives Meme Coin to 50x Surge
In recent days, Musk has been frequently posting and retweeting content related to U.S. politics on his Twitter account, clearly showing his support for Trump, who is running for election. Early this morning, a user @Chriswinig commented under Musk’s tweet about New York’s crime rate rising by 11%, saying, “It’s time!” and attached an image of Musk’s original avatar with laser eyes, labeled “Dark mask.”
This image was generated by a website named DarkMagacoin. The site was created by the community following a shooting incident involving Trump, based on a famous photo of Trump raising his fist. The site allows fans to generate similar dark laser eye images using their provided tools, under the slogan “Dark MAGA Patriots Control Everything.”
Most importantly, the site launched a meme coin, $DMAGA. However, before Musk changed his avatar, the trading volume of $DMAGA was less than $2 million a week after its launch.
Early this morning, Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race reignited the enthusiasm of Trump supporters. Musk then changed his avatar to the image from the comment section, seen as a high-profile reaction celebrating Biden’s withdrawal.
The community quickly noticed that a16z founder Marc Andreessen and Messari founder Ryan Selkis also changed their avatars to the “laser eyes” to show their support for Trump.
With Musk’s endorsement, DMAGA began to skyrocket, increasing over 50 times within a few hours. As of this writing, its market cap has exceeded $60 million.
Musk Wore Laser Eyes During the Bull Market Three Years Ago
In fact, “laser eyes” hold special significance in the crypto community as a symbol of belief in Bitcoin.
At the beginning of 2021, during the bull market three years ago, Bitcoin surged from $29,000 at the start of the year to $56,000. Amid the excitement and bullish sentiment in the crypto community, crypto podcast host Greg Zaj launched the “#LaserRayUntil100K” campaign on Twitter, believing that Bitcoin would soon break the $100,000 mark.
“Laser eyes” refer to a concept from gaming where enemies controlled by another entity have glowing yellow eyes. The crypto community adopted laser eye portraits to signify their belief in Bitcoin. At that time, notable figures like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, CoinShares CEO Meltem Demirors, and U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis participated in the campaign.
The most notable participant was Musk himself. On February 20, 2021, Musk suddenly changed his avatar to a girl with laser eyes, set against a Bitcoin backdrop. Under Musk’s lead, Twitter was awash with laser eye images.
Interestingly, Bitcoin recently surged to $68,000, making the three-year-old “#LaserRayUntil100K” campaign feel just as relevant today.