Source: Adobe / Antonio Gravante
A recently-created meme coin named GROK faced a dramatic crash, losing 74% of its value within moments after the well-known crypto sleuth ZachXBT exposed its links to a known scam.
The GROK token is named after – and obviously attempting to capitalize on – Elon Musk’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot with the same name, which was unveiled earlier this month by the billionaire.
It’s important to note, however, that the token, nor any of the hundreds of other tokens with similar names, have any official affiliation with Grok AI bot.
According to ZachXBT, the Twitter account promoting GROK have connections to “at least one other scam” carried out in the past.
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
The revelation about the token’s creator triggered a rapid sell-off, with GROK crashing from an all-time high of $0.02 on Monday to less to just $0.009 the next day, according to data from CoinGecko.
At the time of writing on Wednesday, the token had regained some its losses, trading at $0.012.
GROK price since creation. Source: CoinGecko
In response to ZachXBT’ allegations, GROK’s developers took steps to salvage the situation.
So far, a Space broadcast has been hosted on X, and the developers have also burned 90 million tokens, worth around $1.2 million at today’s price, from the deployer wallet.
Both of the actions were seemingly done in an attempt to demonstrate commitment to the token project by the developers.
Mixed reactions in the community
Despite this, the incident has stirred controversy within the crypto community on X.
“Thanks for saving me from the scammer by sending my coins to 0 before he does,” one trader said, while another criticized the on-chain expert for “WRECKING people” who were just part of a “community project.”
“You do realize you are playing with people’s hard earned money,” the angry community member wrote.
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