The newly launched PEPE has seen a significant surge in daily trading volume, leading over rivals Shiba Inu and Dogecoin by a large margin.
Crypto data aggregator CoinGecko reported that the ERC-20 token posted $226 million in 24-hour trading volume on Sunday, while Shiba Inu posted $128.2 million within the same period. That day’s surge in trading volume placed PEPE as the 17th most traded crypto in the market.
The meme coin hit a new all-time high of $0.000000816. By Sunday, the coin’s surge in price amounted to 38,900 percent since PEPE’s launch. It took PEPE less than two weeks after the launch to record a market capitalization of more than $326 million. It became one of the top 125 coins by market capitalization on Sunday.
The suspicious behavior has been confirmed by transaction timing, the wallets have been freshly created and funded for the sole purpose of purchasing $PEPE a few minutes after its listing.
That’s a really surprising coincidence!https://t.co/AyJXll5wQY
— Louround 🥂 (@Louround_) April 20, 2023
The Pepe the Frog meme-inspired token used social media hype for promotion, like most of its meme coin predecessors. Pepe the Frog was first drawn by American artist Matt Furie in 2005. Internet users mostly use the meme as a 4chan—a popular meme imageboard—inside joke, but it also became a symbol of resistance used by political protesters in Hong Kong.
Analysts said it was still “too early” to determine whether PEPE would follow preceding projects that lost popularity after a while.
Analysts said PEPE’s listing on a major crypto exchange could affect its longevity. Crypto exchange OKX has listed the token after its recent 200 percent rally. World’s largest exchange Binance also published a PEPE buyers guide, even though it had not listed the meme coin on its platform.
According to analysts, meme coins are high-risk investment instruments. Its price is tied to online hype due to the nature of memes. Analysts also said meme coin’s value is vulnerable to market manipulation as certain investors may hoard the token in large quantities. These whales, however, may encounter difficulty in cashing out their tokens without enough liquidity, even at the peak of the meme token’s value.
Crypto analysts said PEPE might surpass Floki, currently the fourth biggest in the meme coin category. The gap between PEPE and Floki’s daily trading volumes on Sunday was less than $8 million. Analysts added that PEPE could break into the top 100 of all crypto shortly.
Market monopoly issue
Crypto analysts have raised concerns about the hoarding behavior of these whales, who purchased a large amount of PEPE after its issuance on Ethereum. These investors could turn $1,200 of initial capital into more than $9 million within days.
While this investment strategy often occurs in meme coins that create hype because they attract liquidity from many traders, analysts have argued that it affects exit liquidity significantly. These tokens are prone to experiencing a liquidity crunch that can plummet the price.
On-chain data showed that the largest PEPE holder held more than $1.1 million worth of the meme coin. Flipside Crypto reported that in addition to PEPE, the same address holds $1.1 million in Shiba Inu and $1 million in Floki, suggesting the owner is an active meme coin investor. The investor also currently keeps $43,000 worth of ETH.
1/ We found that 5 addresses related to pepecexwallet.eth bought 8.87T $PEPE at a low price, and the cost was ~0.19 $ETH ($385).
Then sold 7.76T $PEPE for $1.23M on #DEX, made nearly $1.23M (3,200x)! pic.twitter.com/hIvTJX6UTK
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 24, 2023
Analysts said most top holders usually kept their tokens across several wallets. Blockchain data showed five addresses linked to “pepecexwallet.eth,” which received transfers from the PEPE deployer contract. These five wallets cumulatively purchased more than 8.87 trillion PEPE after the launch for just $385. They sold the stash several days later for more than $1.23 million. The investor mainly used Uniswap to sell the meme coin.
In April, crypto analysts said that nearly three percent of PEPE holdings were connected to each other. Crypto exchanges MEXC Global and Huobi are currently the biggest commercial PEPE holders, cumulatively holding more than 5.5 percent of the supply.
