Congressman's Joke About Mongoose Coin Leads To 4,000% Gains Overnight

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman’s recent comments ridiculing the nature of cryptocurrencies like “Mongoose Coin” has resulted in a massive surge in the price of a coin by that very name.

What Happened: Speaking at a Wednesday hearing at the House Financial Services Committee, the California Democrat said the No. 1 threat to crypto is crypto itself.

He argued that Bitcoin BTC/USD could be displaced by Ethereum ETH/USD, which in turn could be displaced by Dogecoin DOGE/USD, Hamster Coin, Cobra Coin and so on.

“What could MongooseCoin do to CryptoCoin?" he joked.

No later than minutes after this mention, a crypto token, Mongoose MONG/USD was created.

It has amassed a market cap of $22.5 million in just two days, as per data from Dextools.

“Named by Congress. Made by Mongress,” reads the project's Twitter bio. Its 3,000-plus holders have helped the price appreciate over 4,000% overnight. At its highest point, the token was up by 80,000%.

As of Friday morning, the coin’s total liquidity stands at a little over $2.8 million and its daily trading volume exceeds $11 million.

A number of other “Mongoose coin” spinoffs such as GOOSE, Son of Mongoose (SOM) and Baby Mongoose (BMONGO) were also created and experienced similar wild surges in price.

Hamster Coin HAM/USD surged 71% within 5 minutes of Sherman’s suggestion that it could replace Dogecoin.