The made-up crypto token – Manchester United Fan Token (MUFC) – for the super popular football club, sees an unexpected revival. All it took was one tweet from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Elon Musk accidentally triggers Manchester United Fan Token jump
According to data retrieved by CoinPaprika.com, MUFC surged by almost 3,000% in the hours following Musk’s tweet about purchasing Manchester United.
However, due to relatively low volume and liquidity, the MUFC surge appears to be a price manipulation.
To be clear, MUFC is not an official Man Utd cryptocurrency token. It started in August 2021 after a group of programmers—reportedly ardent supporters—pretended that owning MUFC would offer investors influence over the football club’s decisions.
In November 2021, the team conducted an “airdrop” round of 10,000,000,000 MUFC, offering to distribute 10,000 MUFC to users who followed its official social media handles. The anticipation of receiving free MUFC tokens boosted its price to as high as $1.
However, the project proved to be a mirage, with MUFC dropping by 100% after November. It was thought to be extinct until Musk resurrected it on August 17 with a tweet.
Just a joke
The Tesla CEO posted on Twitter that he will buy Manchester United football club, which he subsequently conceded was a “long-running joke.”
However, the news sent Manchester United’s financial assets surging. These included the club’s shares MANU, which increased 1.97% in pre-market trading, and Tezos (XTZ), the club’s official blockchain and training partner, whose market value increased by $138.85 million.
Musk’s tweet even caused Manchester City’s official coin, CITY, to climb by almost 14% to hit $7 per unit, despite Manchester City being a different football team.
The event confirms Musk’s influence over the cryptocurrency market, particularly over memecoins like Dogecoin.
Interestingly, MUFC had only traded against two crypto assets in the last 24 hours: WBNB and USDT. While the liquidity for the WBNB/MUFC pair was just $106.84, it was significantly lower for the USDT/MUFC pair, which was around $10, according to statistics from PancakeSwap.
Conversely, the net volume that supported MUFC’s 3,000% gain in the last 24 hours was about $39,000, indicating that there were fewer traders supporting the huge upside move.
As a result, a few speculators probably manipulated the token’s price by taking advantage of MUFC’s low liquidity. Although it’s unclear how many traders believed the fake upside story, the likelihood that MUFC’s rate would fall back to zero is strong considering that it has already fallen by 50% from its local top.