Will Smith Slap Inspires New Token And It Rallied 10,000% After Oscars Assault

A newly-created cryptocurrency inspired by Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 94^th Academy Awards has seen a massive surge over the last day.

What Happened: A token called Will Smith Inu WSI/USD began trading on decentralized exchange Uniswap UNI/USD shortly after the events at the Oscars unfolded.

The Ethereum ETH/USD-based token amassed a trading volume of $3.65 million in the last day and has since lost most of its value. The token was still up 287% as of Tuesday morning.

As it is fairly simple to create a blockchain-based digital asset using the ERC-20 or BEP-20 token standard, meme-coin creators have often quickly capitalized on current trends to make quick profits.

In this case, the creator of the token reportedly made around 10 ETH or $33,000 while spending 4 ETH or $13,200 on creating the contract and supplying the initial liquidity.

Last year, a token inspired by Netflix Inc’s NFLX Squid Game saw a similar rise and fall in value. Despite being labeled an obvious scam, the token saw an 83,000% surge in price before crashing to zero.

Meme-coins Shiba Inu SHIB/USD and Floki Inu FLOKI/USD have also seen significant price rallies after Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk tweeted about naming his dog “Floki.”