PEPE plunges 15% as strange token movements spark fears of rug pull

August 25, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The price of Pepe has plummeted 15% after developers sent nearly 4% of the memecoin’s total supply to exchanges without warning.

The price of the frog-themed memecoin Pepe (PEPE) has plunged nearly 15% after recent changes to a multisig wallet and new token transfers ignited fears of a “rug pull” by its developers.

The allegations — as well as the negative price action — came as $16 million worth of Pepe tokens were sent from the developers’ multisig wallet to various crypto exchanges on Aug. 24.

1/4

1 hour ago, the Pepe multisig wallet, changed the amount of signatures required on their multisig from a 5/8 to 2/8. This comes after sending $15.7 million worth of $PEPE to exchanges.

A breakdown of what we know: pic.twitter.com/bxBxp6Nzqz
— ASXN (@asxn_r) August 24, 2023

According to data from blockchain custody app Safe Global, the wallet address transferred 16 trillion Pepe tokens — approximately 3.8% of the total supply — to three exchanges and an unverified wallet address.

Data shows $8.2 million worth of Pepe was sent to OKX, $6.5 million to Binance and $434,000 to Bybit, while an additional $400,000 was transferred to an unknown wallet.

*Owners of the Pepe multisig wallet transferred 16 Trillion PEPE. Source: Safe Global*

Following the transfer of the 16 trillion Pepe tokens to exchanges, the developers made a curious change to the team’s multisig wallet, which at the time of publication still contains $10 million worth of Pepe.

Data from Etherscan shows that the wallet now only requires two out of eight signatures — formerly five out eight — to sign off on whether or not the wallet should make transfers.

*The change in number of signatures required to approve transactions from the multisig wallet. Source: Etherscan*

Notably, the transfer of funds marked the first time that Pepe tokens had ever been sent from the project's multisig wallet to exchanges.

Many memecoin investors heralded Pepe as the next major memecoin, with some suggesting that — come the next bull run — the frog-themed meme token was capable of “flipping” the original memecoin, Dogecoin (DOGE).

The movements of funds out of the multisig could throw this thesis, for some, into question.

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PEPE Token Continues Downward Spiral, Registers 60% Drop From All-Time High

May 11, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Pepe’s market cap sinks $1B in 5 days, some whales are still buying

May 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Pepe’s market cap sinks B in 5 days, some whales are still buying

Coin Telegraph

Pepe has witnessed a 56% decline over the past 5 days, wiping a billion dollars from its total market cap.

The market cap of new memecoin Pepe (PEPE) has fallen $1.1 billion from its May 6 peak, though on-chain data shows it's still being bought by some crypto whales.

Over the last five days, the price of the memecoin has plummeted more than 56% falling from a peak of $0.00000431 to $0.00000193, according to CoinGecko.

The downward price action of Pepe has seen the token’s total valuation sinking from a peak of $1.82 billion on May 6 to $820 million at the time of publication.

The market capitalization of Pepe since April 20. Source: CoinGecko.

A May 8 report penned by researchers from crypto fintech firm Matrixport attributed Pepe’s sharp decline in price to traders selling large chunks of their holdings to new retail investors following the memecoin’s listing on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trading volume.

Additionally, the report found that the largest driver of Pepe’s meteoric price action since its inception on April 14, seems to be coming from traders based in Asia. According to Matrixport, buying activity during Asian trading hours contributed a staggering 3,657% to the total 9,071% rally witnessed by the memecoin as of May 8.

*Pepe price performance categorized by trading hours in world time zones. Source: Matrixport.*

Another data point that could provide more validation to the theory is that Ethereum deposits in the 24 hours following the memecoin’s listing on the exchange surged to highs not seen since November 2021.

Crypto market intelligence firm Santiment suggested that this was due in large part to early buyers of Pepe securing profits by transferring their holdings — which were mostly purchased by way of ETH swaps on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and 1inch — back into Ether (ETH).

Updating our report on #Ethereum's sky-high active deposits, exchange addresses interacting on the network is now at its highest level since November, 2021. As expected, $ETH is showing decoupling signs and on the cusp of breaking $2k once again. https://t.co/zYjY7669yj https://t.co/dQlKsTVyt2 pic.twitter.com/2nMXOUGgYC
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) May 5, 2023

Despite the steep decline in price over the past week, some of the more well-known and notorious whales in the crypto space are still purchasing Pepe at the subdued price levels.

According to data from blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain, “Machi Big Brother”, the online persona of former tech entrepreneur Jeffrey Huang, has purchased a total of 73.4 ETH — equivalent to roughly $137,000 — of Pepe in the past 4 days, with an average purchase price of $0.000002082, which rests roughly 3% below the current trading price.

Machi Big Brother bought 6B $PEPE again 30 mins ago.

He has bought a total of 66B $PEPE with 73.4 $ETH ($137K) in the past 3 days, with an average buying price of $0.000002082.https://t.co/8TP6j6unZw pic.twitter.com/Ubmg3ZC1rm
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 10, 2023

While other more memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and its similarly canine-themed counterpart Shiba Inu (SHIB) have used their material success to build out further applications and use cases for their respective tokens, Pepe seems to be a stab at the idea of providing value at all.

Essentially, Pepe’s anonymous development team have made it clear that the token is "completely useless," and the humor of this alone is a good enough reason for investors to “ape” into it. The official website of the frog-themed token features a closing disclaimer that describes the token in the following way:

“$PEPE is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return. There is no formal team or roadmap. the coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only.”

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