From Shiba Inu dog to Pepe the Frog, the crypto Twitterverse has a keen eye for memes coins. Following in the footsteps of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, the PEPE token has now become the talk of the town among crypto traders.
Over the last 24 hours, PEPE’s price is up by a staggering 300 percent, according to the crypto platform CoinMarketCap (CMC). Furthermore, its trading volume hovered around $103 million, up 115 percent in the last 24 hours. Since April 17, the token’s price has climbed by over 5,200 percent, according to CMC, rising from $0.00000005361 to its press-time value of $0.0000002865. Without a doubt, PEPE’s movement indicates that the meme coin is turning heads in the crypto community.
What is a PEPE token?
Pepe the Frog, a much-loved internet meme, made its way to the world of cryptocurrency following the launch of the PEPE token on April 16. While Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have already established themselves among community members and meme enthusiasts, PEPE has captured the meme coin-obsessed public in just three days.
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Since its launch, PEPE’s market capitalisation has grown to nearly $120 million and the same has attracted over 19,000 unique holders. A quick reminder — this token has no connection to the original Pepe the Frog meme or its creator, Matt Furie.
Nonetheless, the token is modelled around the meme and its creator. The meme coin’s mascot is none other than Furie’s Pepe, a funny-looking cartoonish frog with a green humanoid body that first appeared in the 2005 comic, Boy’s Club. The meme went viral in the 2010s and has continued to resurface even years later.
The total token supply is 420 trillion, inspired by the cannabis slang culture. According to the PEPE website, 93.1 percent of tokens have already been sent to the liquidity pool, have been burned, and contracts have been renounced, leaving only 6.9 percent of the supply in a multisig (also known as multisignature wallet or shared wallet) team wallet to be used in CEX listings, bridges, and liquidity pools.
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While meme coin traders are busy debating whether Shiba Inu could overtake Doge this year, PEPE has managed to grab the limelight and emerge as another rival in the meme coin race.
Why has PEPE surged in popularity?
Like most people who invest in meme projects, crypto traders were initially drawn to PEPE’s ‘meme appeal.’ From there, traders were drawn to PEPE tokens by the prospect of quick returns, which highly volatile meme coins generally provide.
In comparison to blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, which have relatively low volatility, meme coins are very volatile in price and they are frequently regarded as high-risk, high-reward assets.
Because most meme currencies are particularly sensitive to news updates or external occurrences, they typically trend for short periods of time and cool off soon after. On that front, the sudden surge in PEPE’s price was explained by blockchain intelligence company Arkham. The firm tweeted that an Ethereum account bought 1.82 trillion PEPE for $20, which constituted a significant share of the token’s net circulating.
Following the whale purchase, other investors jumped on board, taking that position to worth over $150,000. Although the whale sold the tokens early, the price increase lasted for a long time.
At the time of writing, PEPE tokens are available only in four Uniswap pools. The pools are PEPE/ETH, PEPE/PEPES, WOJAK/PEPE, and PEPE/USDC. To refresh your memory, the pools allow holders to swap their cryptocurrency based on the trading pair. The total value locked on these four pools amount to over $1.5 million.
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit also played a pivotal role in driving the hype of PEPE tokens, with scores of accounts outlining its price increase. Additionally, many pointed towards its roadmap, where the team has promised token-gated Discord groups, upcoming partnerships, CEX listings, merch, T1 exchange listings, and a burning mechanism, among many other things.
Conclusion
Investing in meme coins is a risky bet, as their prices can drop as quickly as they spike. Nonetheless, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have attracted investors due to their tremendous community-building and ecosystem developments.
PEPE, on the other hand, has a long way to go before reaching the heights of its larger predecessors. It will be fascinating to see if the enthusiasm surrounding it is fleeting or if the PEPE team has a long-term strategy. Only time will tell if PEPE can carve out its own niche in the meme coin world and establish itself as a genuine contender, or if it will fade into obscurity.
