Solana meme coin Gigachad (GIGA) is up 21.2% on the day after the model behind the meme endorsed the project on his Instagram. Shortly after, famous bodybuilder Mike ‘Titan’ O’Hearn also pushed the project.

Ernest Khalimov (known as Berlin 1969 on Instagram) is the model behind the famous gigachad meme. He is one of many models photographed by Russian artist Krista Sudmalis for her “Sleek n Tears” project.

When Khalimov had his hyper-muscular figure and chiseled face photographed, the internet went crazy, touting him as the ‘gigachad’—in reference to the internet term “chad,” which describes an alpha male figure.

Years later, a Solana meme coin based on the term was created. The token has been endorsed by meme model Khalimov, UFC fighter Paulo Costa, and bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn. This was possible, the team believe, due to the sports brand, Giga Fitness, that the team runs alongside the meme coin.

“We come to these athletes and influencers like ‘don’t worry about the coin, check out our brand,’” community takeover member Phantom told Decrypt on What’s the Meta? “It opens the door to a lot of people.”

This is how the meme coin has enabled fitness celebrities to endorse and promote their project without being directly involved with crypto.

On Tuesday, O’Hearn posted a meme referencing Gigachad. Then the meme model himself, Khalimov, shared a post on Instagram showing him throwing a Giga Fitness t-shirt while sitting in bed. The post got over 91,000 likes in 20 hours. Then he reposted Giga Fitness on his Instagram story.

In turn GIGA climbed 21.2% over the past 24 hours, peaking at a market cap of $213 million. But more recently it’s fallen to a $191,000 million market cap at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.

Shortly after launching the meme coin, a representative from the site Know Your Meme reached out to the GIGA team claiming that they’d spent years attempting to contact the meme model Khalimov and the photographer Sudmalis.

“What’s interesting is that they responded to us six months after we reached out to them,” Phantom told Decrypt. “Essentially, from what I'm reading, they've been watching us, and they've been seeing what we've been building. And they view this as the first actual, like genuine community built around Gigachad.”

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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