This McDonald's Meme Cryptocurrency Is Worth $6 Million

Starbucks isn't the only company in the food industry working with digital currency — McDonald's is also hopping onto the cryptocurrency bandwagon. The push for this partnership came from crypto fans begging on a Twitter exchange between the fast food chain and Billy Markus, who is one of dogecoin's co-creators. McDonald's had essentially tweeted Markus an image of the cryptocurrency's Shiba Inu symbol when he had virtually "taken" a fry from the picture of an earlier Tweet. This caused lots of people to engage with Markus' quote-tweet of the image, in which he said, "Let's make sure this tweet response of McDonald's is their highest engagement one."

Then Elon Musk, one of dogecoin's biggest supporters, entered the conversation. The Tesla Motors' CEO published a tweet on January 25, in which he said, "I will eat a happy meal on tv if @McDonalds accepts Dogecoin." McDonald's, which we know has an extremely big and fiery internet personality that often gets social media users cracking up, responded by saying, "Only if @tesla accepts grimacecoin." The message included a graphic of a purple coin with the iconic character's face (via Twitter).

If you're a huge McDonald's fan, you know that Grimace is one of the chain's most well-known icons, making him the perfect icon for the restaurant's own version of dogecoin. The fast food restaurant already had a sketched-out version of its proposed "grimacecoin." And it seemed that both tech enthusiasts and McNugget lovers were on board with the partnership: Dogecoin went up 6.75% and was valued at $0.1501, and McDonald's stock went up 1.3% (via Entrepreneur). Fortune notes that there was a new grimacecoin website, and the cryptocurrency gained over 1,000 holders.

Grimacecoin definitely proved to be quite valuable, even though it was started through a lighthearted banter between a tech mogul and McDonald's social media team. Over 10 different cryptocurrencies using the name were created on the Binance Smart Chain Network (via Coindesk). One version on the Ethereum network was actually worth $6 million. Hopefully, we'll see Elon Musk enjoying a Happy Meal soon.