Elon Musk's recently launched AI service, which is not officially affiliated with Grok Token – has achieved a market cap of $160 million just eight days after its initial launch.
But as an 8-day-old meme coin not powered by the AI chatbot that shares its name, it's experiencing a lot of volatility. At the time this story is being written, the market capitalization of the GROK token has dropped to $78 million, according to DexTools.
The price increased by 13,000% last week, doubling in 24 hours. But to be clear, this means that according to CoinGecko it has reached a high level of $0.02. Despite 11,500 holders and significant trading volumes, GROK-USD's liquidity is limited, which increases the risk of price collapse if large amounts are sold.
Meanwhile, Grok—an AI chatbot service launched by social app X, known for its uncensored and humorous nature—has contributed to the token's popularity even though the tokens themselves are unrelated to the actual AI service. The creation of tokens and ease of trading on decentralized exchanges has led to the proliferation of such speculative assets.
It's a meme-fueled narrative that's played out many times before. The BALD token (named after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is bald) was launched at Base, Layer 2 before its creators made millions. Pepecoin has garnered a lot of attention and its market capitalization has surpassed $1.5 billion, before the team behind meme coin Darling transferred millions of PEPE tokens to exchanges without warning. And there's still a whole CoinGecko category of dog-themed coins for tokens that pay homage to the original meme coin, Dogecoin.
Adding to the layers of memes in GROK's launch is the fact that Tesla's CEO and founder is himself the self-proclaimed father of Doug. DOGE is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it inflated the price of buying and selling time through social media posts. After buying Twitter for $44 billion, he joked twice that he would change the company's logo to a shiba inu behind a doge meme.
Meanwhile, Musk's Grok AI competes with several recent high-profile AI chatbot startups. One of its competitors is Google Bard, an experimental chatbot that aims to expand Google's reach to billions of users, showing the tech giant's ambitions in the AI space. And there's the main competitor: OpenAI. The company has introduced ChatGPT Plus, a subscription-based version of its widely used AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which offers enhanced features.
Social media platforms are also entering the fray, with Snapchat unveiling “My AI,” a chatbot powered by OpenAI's new GPT technology. Meanwhile, as LinkedIn announced it surpassed 1 billion members, it launched a new AI chatbot designed as a “job coach,” complementing its generative AI tools for premium members.
Editor's Note: This article was written with the help of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Stacy Elliott.
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