- Elon Musk offered a 19-year-old $5,000 to shut down a Twitter account that tracked his private jet.
- The teen declined and countered with an offer of $50,000 or a Tesla Model 3, to which Musk said no.
- Now, an "ElonJet" meme coin has launched with hopes of buying him a Tesla "if Elon won't."
A new crypto token called "ElonJet" launched last week in support of a 19-year-old's controversial jet-tracking project that Elon Musk himself has tried — and failed — to shut down.
Jack Sweeney, the teen who runs a Twitter page tracking Musk's private jet, previously declined the billionaire's offer of $5,000 to delete the account. Last week, Sweeney countered with an ask of $50,000 or a Tesla Model 3, to which Musk said no.
The people behind the ElonJet meme coin say they want to follow through where Musk fell short and buy Sweeney a Tesla. According to their Twitter page, this would happen if the ElonJet coin hits a market cap of $10 million — the coin's unvetted valuation on CoinMarketCap.com was around $3 million as of Sunday afternoon.
—ElonJet Coin (@elonjet_) February 2, 2022
ElonJet has no association or affiliation with Jack Sweeney himself, and the account claims it was blocked by Musk.
"It's just pretty funny what this has all turned into," Sweeney told Insider, adding that "if they believe in the meme I trust them to follow through."
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies associated with internet jokes. Elon Musk is a well-known fan of the meme coin Dogecoin, which originally started as a joke between two engineers.
"The concept behind ElonJet has been inspired by the global popularity of the 'meme coin' phenomena, accompanied by Sweeney's jet tracking endeavours," the ElonJet website says.
As for what's next for the jet-tracking teen, he told Insider he has no plans to raise his ask of $50,000 to shut the tracker down. Since his project has gone viral, he said multiple people are now helping him run the account.
"Our hope is to have all planes' data available in a decentralized format. This will help carbon emissions and costs reduce greatly as this data will be available to more people globally," he said.