As the cryptocurrency industry matures and institutional adoption increases, digital assets, although still volatile, and slowly moving toward being more akin to traditional, buy-and-hold investments. One subsection of the industry, however, is still prone to incredible amounts of volatility, which can see relatively small investments turn into fortunes overnight — or even in the span of a couple of hours. The subsection in question is, to little surprise, meme coins . In one such instance, a savvy trader loaded up on millions of Kekius Maximus (KM), purchased for just a little over $4,000. Quite soon, the trade paid off — in a big and unexpected way. Per data retrieved by Finbold from Solscan on December 31 , the account in question made two transactions, roughly 12 hours before the time of publication. The first saw the purchase of 9.9 million KM worth $2,246 at the time, while the second trade was slightly smaller, encompassing the acquisition of 8.2 million Kekius Maximus for $2,566. All in all, the trader spent $4,360 to purchase 18.15 million KM tokens. The trader’s initial purchases of KM. Source: Solscan A stunt by Elon Musk made Kekius Maximus go parabolic Kekius Maximus is a riff on Pepe The Frog — in this instance, wearing Roman armor as a reference to the movie ‘Gladiator’. While variations of Pepe are quite popular memes and enjoy a lot of staying power, a unique catalyst drove the price surge. Namely, roughly nine hours after the purchase, Elon Musk , the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ) noted crypto advocate, and owner of social media site X , changed his account name to Kekius Maximus. In short order, KM prices soared by 13,362% — up from just $0.00040 to $0.05385, although prices have since receded to $0.02658. Still, the price of Kekius Maximus is still trading at levels some 6,545% higher than it was before Musk’s show of support KM price 1-day chart. Source: TradingView At the time of writing, the Kekius Maximus held by this address was worth $482,427 — at peak prices, it would have been worth somewhere in the ballpark of $977,377. Naturally, as the trade was so well-timed, X users immediately began speculating whether or not this was a stroke of luck or the action of an insider, perhaps even Musk himself. Unlike most accounts that make such significant profits on meme coins, this address has been making a reasonable number of trades since being opened — meaning that it is unlikely to be an automated system. Featured image via Shutterstock The post Crypto trader turns $4.3k into $970,000 in a few hours appeared first on Finbold .