Launched mid-April 2023, PEPE is also a memecoin though one of a different variety than popular Dogecoin or Shiba Inu. Memecoins, cryptocurrencies based on internet memes and often popularized and promoted by influencers in the crypto space like Elon Musk, have caught the attention of investors due to lack of seriousness. However, the potential for investors to earn money with memecoins is real.
The official PEPE Twitter describes the memecoin as “the most memorable memecoin in existence”, adding that “dogs had their days”, referring to an earlier generation of memecoins including the famous Dogecoin.
The meme coin’s mascot is Furie’s Pepe, a 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. Its circulating supply is 420 million, a reference to the cannabis culture’s “20/4”.
Within the first few days of its launch, PEPE quickly rose to prominence as the high-profile purchase that attracted the crypto community on Twitter. A memecoin investor swapped 0.125 ETH, worth about $250, for 5.9 trillion PEPE tokens.
As interest in memecoins grew, the value of those tokens increased to around $1.8 million by April 19, 2023, offering a potential return of about 4,500 times the initial investment. Unsurprisingly, tens of thousands of other investors started to hoard PEPE tokens before the price hits the upper limit. However, investors may have difficulty selling them at current prices, given PEPE’s relatively low liquidity pool.
So the future of PEPE is still unclear. Several experts, including DFG crypto fund founder James Wo, say that “memecoins are important parts of the crypto trading landscape, whether we like it or not,” and it is likely that memecoins like PEPE will continue to appear. Nor does it rule out the possibility that PEPE will disappear after a short while. In that case, the question for investors including holders of almost 6 trillion PEPE is whether they will be able to profit from the token before the community’s attention turns to elsewhere.