The Whirlwind Journey of Pepecoin: A Memecoin Saga

When Memes Collide: The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Pepecoin Culture

Launched in mid- April 2023, $PEPE’s market capitalization skyrocketed to $1.61 billion within weeks of its launch.

The memecoin is based on “Pepe the Frog” meme and the supply of PEPE tokens is upwards of 420 trillion, a reference to cannabis culture’s “4/20.”

Memecoins in recent history have drawn both investor attention and eyerolls over a perceived lack of seriousness. But the potential for risk takers to score big with memecoins is real, nonetheless.

Pepecoin garnered attention after an investor swapped 0.125 ETH, worth about $250, for a whopping 5.9 trillion PEPE tokens. As interest in the memecoin grew, the value of those tokens surged to about $1.02 million by April 19, 2023, yielding a potential return of roughly 4,000 times the initial investment within a span of a few days.

However, the investor who bought those 5.9 trillion tokens may have a difficult time selling them at the current price, given PEPE’s relatively low liquidity. Attempts to exit the entire position could lead to a crash in price.

This is why it’s important to be cautious when trading with coins that have spectacular returns as the market for them might be extremely shallow.

Currently the token’s price has dropped 66% since hitting an all-time high of $1.61 billion on May 6. It’s current market cap has fallen below $700 million. The top performing traders have increasingly been reducing their $PEPE holdings, a sign that the meme coin mania of the past weeks may be losing steam.

Speculative investments such as memecoins offer eye watering returns to early investors or founders of the project who have the ability to market the coin and generate interest around it. Once the euphoria dies investors late to the party who entered at the peak are faced with losses as the price enters a downward cycle.

It’s important to be cautious before entering into speculative cryptocurrency trades, given the possibility of the entire investment going to zero and not let fear of missing out drive investment decisions.