Elon's latest crypto stunt draws criticism, praise (and also maybe pumps ETH)

Just another Tuesday in crypto, as Elon tweets “Ethereum” and everyone loses their collective mind:

The infamous Tesla CEO and living meme, Elon Musk’s single-word tweet has already amassed almost 100k likes, and invoked a flurry of excited and somewhat-confused crowd reactions:

“What does it mean Elon Musk???“

“Elon pumping eth again? 👀👀“

“elon is just memeing and having a good time“

And while folks were still trying to figure out what - if anything - Musk was actually trying to say, just 7 minutes later he pulls a complete 180 with another profound, two-letter tweet:

This, however, proved not the end of Elon’s sudden interest in the world’s second biggest crypto asset. After Vitalik invited him to this year’s Devcon, Elon’s tweets (thankfully) got much less esoteric and more specific:

The question prompted a series of tweets from Vitalik, in which he shared his top picks for future Ethereum-based solutions, including a “globally accessible financial system”, “sign in with Ethereum” functionalities, “new forms of human organizational structure” and many more.

As a result, there was an immediate surge of 'Elon' and 'Musk' mentions on crypto social media. The two terms have been mentioned a combined total of 470+ times over the last 24 hours:

The crowd’s reaction to Elon's latest shenanigans was predictably mixed. Some saw this as just a lazy attempt to test his influence on the crypto market:

Others quickly brushed past those concerns (and the follow-up ‘jk’) and assessed Elon’s comments as positively bullish:

Finally, there were those that felt betrayed by Musk’s newfound interest in Ethereum, as he's previously claimed Doge “might be” his favorite cryptocurrency:

Not known for his subtlety, Justin Sun also attempted to divert Musk's attention to Ethereum’s competitor:

Sun’s single-word tweet, however, has proven less well received:

In the meantime, Ethereum spiked about 2.3% over the past few hours, hitting a 3-day high $161.17 before meeting some resistance. ‘Elon effect’ confirmed?