The popular memecoin-linked artificial intelligence-powered bot, ExplainThisBob, was suspended shortly after Elon Musk called it a “scam crypto account.” ExplainThisBob, on June 18, posted a tweet about the “Pro” version, however, Elon Musk commented on the post that: “This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended.”
BOB has two Twitter accounts: BobEthToken and ExplainThisBob. While BobEthToken is used as the main account, ExplainThisBob is managed by a Twitter bot and often used to comment on celebs ‘ posts. This bot, created by Prabhu Biswal from India, uses the model of Open AI’s GPT-4, to help users answer and break down complex tweets or questions on Twitter.
Data from Coingecko showed that the BOB price quickly dropped from $0.000031 to $0.000018 within 3 hours of Musk’s comment. Its market cap dropped rapidly from $20 million to around $13 million. At the time of writing, BOB is trading around $0.000019.
ExplainThisBob became popular on Twitter in late April 2023 with witty summaries and humorous comments. Musk even tweeted “I love Bob” in April, this tweet also appeared prominently on the project’s website. That made BOB one of the fastest growing memecoins in recent times. Since then, Musk has interacted with this memecoin several times, most recently on June 3, he wrote: “Once again, Bob nails it. Yes, I am endorsing a political candidate because he is competent!”
Besides BOB, AskTheWassie (WASSIE) also suffered the same fate when Elon Musk commented on WASSIE’s tweet that: “Promotion of scams under the guise of being a funny/helpful bot will result in suspension. Doesn’t matter how much you pay us.”
Since the account was suspended, the hashtag “FREEBOB” has gained popularity among the crypto community on Twitter. The majority argued that BOB is not a scam and that the suspension is unfair because it is completely decentralized with 0% tax regime.