Pepe cryptocurrency

The cryptocurrency world is incredibly diverse, with each coin having its own unique story. In mid-April 2023, the meme token PEPE Coin was created.

Within just three weeks of its existence, Pepe managed to appear on major exchanges, after which its daily trading volumes exceeded $300 million. Such a successful start inspired developers to create numerous analogs (list of cryptocurrencies). In this article, we will discuss what this cryptocurrency is, how it came into being, who managed to earn from it, where it can be bought, and most importantly, whether it is worth buying it.

Creation of PEPE token

In early April 2023, an account @pepecoineth appeared on the social network Twitter. It contained only one post - an image of the well-known meme with Pepe the frog in a red cap, with the loud caption "Make Meme coins Great Again."

This call to action was clearly chosen by the creators of the meme coin not by chance. The fact is that almost an identical slogan was voiced by former US President Donald Trump several years earlier in his pre-election speech. Trump's call sounded like this: Make America Great Again or MAGA.

The Pepe cryptocurrency was launched two weeks after the appearance of the first mention of the meme coin on the popular social network. Its developers, who chose not to disclose their identities, released 420.69 trillion coins onto the market. These assets began trading on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

Notably, Uniswap is a decentralized financial protocol that operates on the Ethereum blockchain. It is used for the exchange and trading of cryptocurrencies based on smart contracts. During operations, users remain anonymous, using their Ethereum wallet for blockchain authentication. At the same time, they are required to pay a transaction fee for conducting transactions, which constantly rises as network load increases.

After the start of sales, active discussions of this new token began among various influencers. Debates about the PEPE cryptocurrency took place not only on Twitter but also in thematic channels on Telegram and Discord.

Just one day after it was created, the token's price skyrocketed by over 900%. After three weeks, the coin's market capitalization exceeded $1.6 billion.

Where did the meme come from? In 2005, California comic book artist and illustrator Matt Furie created the black-and-white webcomic Boy's Club, in which one of the main characters was the anthropomorphic Pepe the Frog.

In his comics, Furie told stories about himself and his friends, with whom he spent time together after college classes. In just a few black-and-white pages, depicted animals had fun and goofed around, sometimes commenting on their actions with laconic phrases like "Cool" or "Nice one, bro."

It was from this comic that the main poses and facial expressions of the future meme were taken. However, until 2008, Pepe was an unknown character. The popularity of the meme began to grow only when the image with him was posted on the imageboard 4chan.

It was on 4chan that the frog was colored green, and the meme was named "Feels Good Man."

By the end of the 2000s, 4chan had become one of the most popular image boards in terms of the number of users, and Pepe the Frog managed to break out beyond the forum. After some time, he managed to become a global internet meme. Based on it, thousands of similar memes were created. For example, in 2009, the cheerful frog was turned into a sad one - the corners of his lips were lowered using Photoshop. Of course, the name of the meme changed to "Feels Bad Man."

Images of the frog began to be posted by young women and girls on Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram. This happened so massively that in 2014, under the image of PEPE, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj put "likes."

For orthodox users of 4chan, this was a real blow, as they did not want women to visit the imageboard. They began to draw Hitler mustaches on the frog, the Twin Towers, etc. In short, it included everything that could repel normal people from using memes in ordinary social networks.

Meanwhile, it was in this brutalized form that Pepe became very popular with ultra-rightists. A strange image of a frog with a swastika began to be actively used by various radical supporters.

The meme reached its peak when Donald Trump on Twitter put a "like" under the picture of Pepe with his hairstyle. After that, Hillary Clinton, who was then opposing Trump in the presidential elections, accused him of using an intolerant meme. This became a trigger, and many Internet users began to massively distribute images with Pepe.

At the same time, the Anti-Defamation League classified images with the frog as hate symbols. The reason for this is that against the backdrop of increased activity of right-wing movements and Trump's pre-election campaign, Pepe began to be perceived by many as an antisemitic symbol.

Matt Furie initially followed all these metamorphoses of his character with open amazement, and then with horror. When he realized that the character he created had unexpectedly turned into a Nazi symbol, he tried to remove the frog somehow. And he couldn't come up with anything better than to draw and publish a comic strip with images of its funeral.

Surprisingly, the news of the meme's death became so loud that almost all the major American media talked about it. However, no matter how hard Furie tried, he could not "kill" his character, the news of the funeral was loud, but it did not affect the further existence of the frog.

In early 2017, an internet meme exchange based on the Counterparty blockchain platform was launched. Initially, everyone perceived this idea as a joke, but by March it had become common in Venezuela, almost at the state level.

A digital token was attached to each Pepe meme in the blockchain, after which users were able to exchange them as currency. The price of the cards was confirmed by the Bitcoin system and the Rare Pepe Foundation organization, which assigned a price to each picture. The token's maximum emission limit was 35 million coins.

Interestingly, the creator of the Pepe image, Matt Furie, admitted that he had never been interested in tokens and for some time had never heard of the PEPE coin.

Today, Pepe cryptocurrency is among the top three most popular and successful meme coins, surpassed in scale only by Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. We'll touch on them too, but a little later.

On February 13, 2024, the token price reached $0.000001 (PEPE/USD). Pepe's market capitalization is $461,238,355. Currently, the token ranks 139th in CoinGecko's rating by this indicator.

Revealing secret of high demand

The success of the PEPE cryptocurrency quickly led to the emergence of many similar projects. Most surprisingly, many of them very quickly became popular among users and soared in value by 10% and even by 100%.

However, many similar tokens still desperately lack liquidity, which means that users are severely limited in their ability to buy and sell them at a price even remotely close to the market rate.

For this reason, many young meme tokens are very sensitive to sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate, and any significant buy order causes their price to sharply rise on charts or similarly sharply fall.

Experienced traders take advantage of this quality of meme coins. Their bots carefully track such orders even before they are completed and preemptively place their own, thereby outpacing other less agile market players.

From the very beginning, the PEPE cryptocurrency was traded exclusively on decentralized exchanges (DEX). The fact is that when trading volumes on these platforms increase, the number of transfers within the Ethereum blockchain also grows.

At the peak of PEPE's popularity, activity on the Uniswap exchange and other similar platforms soared to 2021 levels - the same period when Bitcoin, as well as the entire crypto market, saw historically high price levels.

However, all this increased activity on crypto exchanges led to a heavy load on the network, which ultimately triggered a significant rise in Ethereum fees. As a result, any direct work on the network (such as buying meme coins) could cost $50.

These excessively high fees on decentralized exchanges limited the influx of new retail traders into the network. Understanding this, PEPE token developers decided to list it on traditional cryptocurrency exchanges. As a result, it was listed on exchanges such as OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Poloniex, Bitget, and others.

By the way, it was on the BitMEX exchange that perpetual futures trading for the PEPE cryptocurrency first started, with leverage of up to 50.

However, the popular exchange Binance did not rush to launch trading of the meme token on its platform at first, preferring to stay on the sidelines and observe what was happening.

The founder of the exchange, Changpeng Zhao, once mentioned that he did not understand the excitement surrounding meme coins and never intended to trade them himself. However, at the same time, Zhao added that he and his platform are always ready to meet the high demand of users. As a result, after some time, the exchange did indeed add PEPE to its platform.

According to statistics from the largest independent cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko, trading volumes for the PEPE token exceeded $420 million between May 9 and May 10, 2023. Notably, this surge came at a time when its price began to decline.

Trading volumes for the cryptocurrency quickly shifted from Uniswap to Binance. As soon as Binance announced the listing of PEPE, in just 24 hours, more than $160 million worth of trades with the meme coin were performed on this crypto exchange. By the way, on Uniswap, the trading volume with the same token was only $55 million.

Binance undoubtedly outperformed its competitors as it had a user-friendly interface and lower fixed fees. According to statistics from analytical service DEXTools, on May 10, the number of unique Pepe cryptocurrency holders exceeded 100,000.

Tokenomics

The cryptocurrency PEPE has a maximum supply of 420,690,000,000 coins. Of these, 93.1% are located in the liquidity pool, while the remaining 6.9% are held in a multi-signature wallet intended for future use.

The tokenomics of the meme coin utilize a deflationary mechanism, which burns a certain percentage of coins with each transaction. This is necessary to gradually create a scarcity and potentially increase the value of the remaining coins.

Additionally, the PEPE project employs a redistribution system. A certain portion of each transaction is allocated to existing coin holders. This principle helps stimulate interaction among users and encourages them toward long-term investments.

Features of Pepe cryptocurrency

Pepe cryptocurrency has its unique features that set it apart from other meme coins:

• Deflationary Mechanism. This means that with each transfer, a certain percentage of tokens is burned, indicating that over time, the circulating token supply decreases.
• Redistribution System. This principle involves directing a portion of each operation in the network to a pool, which is later distributed among all coin holders.
• Absence of Fees. This means that any trading operations and transactions on the network can be carried out without additional fees.

Who earned six-figure profits on PEPE?

At the initial stage of the meme coin's existence, some traders managed to earn six-figure profits. For example, an unknown individual on April 15, 2023, decided to invest 0.125 ETH (equivalent to $251 at the time) in PEPE. Over time, his investment portfolio is valued at $1.14 million.

The most interesting thing is that there are quite a few such examples. The PEPE pool has approximately 10,000 individual coin holders, with over 400 trillion coins in circulation.

All this frenzy has also led to such unexpected consequences as an increase in gas fees. In addition, the number of "sandwich attacks" has increased. This refers to a bot that intercepts two transactions, inserts itself into them, and starts manipulating prices.

Meme coins in crypto industry

Let's talk about other meme coins. Today, the most popular one is Dogecoin (DOGE).

It was created back in late 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Dogecoin was the first meme token to appear in the crypto market.

Markus and Palmer claimed to have created this coin as a joke, and the name itself was a reference to the famous Doge meme - a Shiba Inu dog named Kabosu.

If Bitcoin's main goal was to have a payment system, and Ethereum's main goal was to have a decentralized application ecosystem, then Dogecoin initially had no goal at all. In the early days of its existence, it was just irony about the emerging cryptocurrency market.

The popularity of the coin was greatly boosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Any of his statements about this cryptocurrency noticeably influenced and continue to influence its price. Since Musk repeatedly promoted the token, speaking positively about it, DOGE eagerly soared.

For example, Tesla released a line of merchandise, but it could only be purchased with DOGE coins. Also, this cryptocurrency could be used to pay for almost all services of Starlink, Starship, and SolarRoof. Elon Musk even introduced the possibility of paying for Tesla electric vehicle charging with DOGE coins.

Recently, Elon Musk has secretly funded the development of Dogecoin. In any case, this confidently declares the cryptocurrency news website Coingape, citing a biography of Musk written by Walter Isaacson. An excerpt from the billionaire's biography was printed in one of the issues of the daily American business newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

The billionaire's brother Kimbal told Isaacson that Elon had repeatedly discussed with him the idea of creating a blockchain-based social network, where users could not only communicate through messages but also make payments using cryptocurrencies. It is said that as payment in the social network, Musk intended to use the Dogecoin token, which he secretly funded.

There is speculation that Musk acquired the social network Twitter to implement his idea. After the billionaire joined the company's board of directors, he openly discussed the future of the social network as a payment system.

Everyone remembers how after buying Twitter, Elon Musk changed the network's logo to an image of the Dogecoin token - a Shiba Inu dog.

Be that as it may, statistics from CoinMarketCap show that Dogecoin's market capitalization exceeds $10 billion.

In 2021, another meme token with a dog symbol appeared - Shiba Inu. By the way, it is in the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Shiba Inu is a token on the Ethereum blockchain. Its popularity soared in 2021 thanks to its unique ecosystem and speculation on its value by retail investors. The active participation of the token community also played a significant role in popularizing Shiba Inu.

Weird as it may sound, but the official Twitter account of the meme coin has more than 1.2 million followers, which is more than the cryptocurrencies Cardano, Kraken, and Solana.

BONK - another meme coin with an image of a Shiba Inu breed as a symbol. This cryptocurrency was launched in early 2023 on the Solana blockchain.

At some point, the token skyrocketed and triggered a surge of abnormal activity on decentralized exchanges. As a result, major trading platforms Bybit and Huobi decided to list it. However, after the January highs, the BONK price never returned to peak levels and, despite the overall growth of the crypto market, gradually began to decline.

The developers of the Pepe cryptocurrency concluded that the dog symbol had outlived its usefulness and that "it's time for Pepe to take reign." The creators of the cryptocurrency anonymously manage its official accounts on social networks, and there are no contact details on the PEPE website.

The very first press release mentioning PEPE was published on April 19, 2023, and it was signed by David Costla. This name is also signed on another press release about the creation of another meme coin, DanGPT considered to be a ChatGPT twin.

How to buy Pepe and where to store it

Buying the Pepe meme coin nowadays is very straightforward. You can use both centralized and decentralized platforms for this purpose. After its emergence and dizzying rise in popularity, the token was quickly listed on almost all major cryptocurrency exchanges.

So, centralized exchanges where you can purchase PEPE include:

• Binance
• OKX
• Bitget
• Huobi
• Bybit
• KuCoin
• Gate.io
• MEXC

If we list decentralized exchanges, PEPE is most actively traded on Uniswap in pools with WETH, and USDT.

For storing PEPE, wallets that support ERC-20 tokens are suitable, which means the following will suffice:

Those wallets that support ERC-20 tokens are suitable for storing PEPE, which means the following will be appropriate:

• Metamask
• Trust Wallet
• MyEtherWallet
• imToken
• Coinbase Wallet

PEPE to reach $1?

Recently, PEPE developers burned coins worth approximately $6 million. Against this backdrop, the price of PEPE jumped by 30% at one point. The developers announced that new team members had joined Pepe, and they would help the cryptocurrency grow. Additionally, they plan to use the remaining 3.79 trillion coins for strategic partnerships and various marketing campaigns.

At the time of writing this article, PEPE was trading at $0.000001, having gained 10.03% in the last 24 hours. PEPE's market capitalization stands at $461,238,355, making it the third-largest meme coin by market value.

After the project's team was expanded with new developers, Pepe forecasts became much more optimistic. However, can it reach $1?

Well, considering some revival in the crypto market, Pepe has every chance of being in the early stages of a new bullish trend. However, many investors still have doubts about whether the token will have enough momentum to jump to $1.

Currently, there are 4.2 quadrillion tokens in existence. For Pepe to rise to $1, its market capitalization would need to reach $4.2 quadrillion. Such a level already exponentially exceeds the market value of all global real estate, stocks, and government debt. That's not even mentioning all types of cryptocurrencies.

In fact, the Pepe cryptocurrency will never be able to reach a price of $1 as it is simply impossible.

However, that does not mean that Pepe is not capable of reclaiming its status as a meme coin that was once valued at $1 billion.