Have you heard about PEPE recently? If not, you must be living under a rock! PEPE is the token that was inspired by the “pepe the frog” meme and has taken over Twitter and other crypto rooms after skyrocketing to a $502 million market cap after being issued just last month. The coin has blasted the other meme tokens out of the water by posting gains of 980% over a twelve-day period – the coin was launched on April 17th – and led to an all-time high price of $0.00000148, according to a report by outlet BeInCrypto.
But should you care about PEPE’s arrival, and how long will it last? It is difficult to say, so let’s explore more about the newly famous meme coin.
Meme coins – a risk for LOLs?
Meme coins are among the most relevant cryptocurrencies in existence for their apparent recognizable features, above all those of being interlinked with a famous internet meme from the past years. These cryptos are usually popularized and promoted by influencers online and on platforms like Twitter and Telegram, like we explained in this post regarding Elon Musk and Doge. The result is an engaged attention by crypto maniacs and risk-oriented investors, but also the disregard of many considering them to lack a degree of seriousness associated with the sector.
However, such a discussion about seriousness is meaningless when talking about meme coins, who garner attention precisely due to that attribute, many investors probably risk buying them simply for the fact that they different from other assets on the market, or because they idolize the images related to them, as was the case when Musk was publicly considering incorporating dogecoin in every aspect of his businesses. PEPE’s official Twitter account, for example, has jokingly poked at Dogecoin by saying “dogs have had their day”, This is just one of the interactions between the meme coins, which garner massive twitter audiences as a result. Another interaction can be seen in the image below.
In addition, meme coins are usually low liquidity tokens, and therefore carry a high degree of risk. Meme coins are notorious for launching with a limited supply, meaning that buying and selling them at a just price may take a while for investors keen to immerse themselves in the space. For example, a trader sold $2 million worth of PEPE using MetaMask swaps and lost $350,000 due to minimal liquidity, as reported by CoinDesk.
What is PEPE’s end game
A frenzy of interest by investors has pushed PEPE to surpass the trading volumes of the other two main meme coins, dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB), which dominated the meme coin market for years. The coin hit a price spike of 100% over the last weekend of April, only reversing its course on May 2nd, with PEPE having lost now 18% in the past day. However, to demonstrate the limitless enthusiasm the coin has instilled on the crypto space. Over the same recent period of downturn, PEPE still maintained a higher trading volume than that of both doge and shiba.
PEPE exploded into prominence following a massive purchase in this first days by a meme coin investor who swapped 0.125 ETH (circa $250) for 5.9 trillion PEPE tokens, increasing interest in the meme coin to massive levels on Twitter and having it surge to over $1.8 million just a couple days later. In the end, an early Decrypt article from April 20th indicates that it is more than likely that PEPE will face the same fate of other meme coins before it, such as Grimacecoin, that have quickly faded from the market. It could also stick around like dogecoin, or even surpass its current levels, but it will likely never reach the popularity of more reliable altcoins. So, the only question remains: will you take a gamble on PEPE?
