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- Internal disagreements between the Pepe (PEPE) holders resulted in a liquidity drain for an already volatile meme coin.
- Pepe’s price had dropped over 38 percent in the past two weeks amid a bearish crypto market outlook.
The third largest meme coin with about $342 million in market capitalization, Pepe (PEPE), has seen its average daily traded volume decline in the recent past amid heightened risks of a rug pull. According to the latest crypto market data, Pepe’s daily traded volume was about $77 million on Monday, down over 15 percent in the past 24 hours.
Additionally, Pepe’s liquidity on decentralized exchanges had significantly declined as most investors scrambled to get out of the meme coin. On Uniswap V2, Pepe’s liquidity with WETH was about $823k and a 24-hour volume of approximately $20 million.
Closer Look at Pepe (PEPE) Drama
Late last week, on-chain intelligence analysts noted an abnormal on-chain transaction on the Pepe (PEPE) network. Notably, about 16 trillion Pepe coins worth about $15 million were sent to different exchanges including Binance, OKX, KuCoin, and ByBit. The transaction aroused different reactions from the community after it was noticed that the core developers had sent the coins after reducing the signatures required for the multi-sig.
Reportedly, three of the team members were involved in the liquidation plan that has since robbed the meme coin of its credibility from investors. Moreover, on-chain data shows that early Pepe token holders have intensified their liquidation process to avoid being locked in a messy market.
An early buyer of $PEPE sold the remaining 1T $PEPE for 537 $ETH($885K) 7 hrs ago.
This guy spent 0.0183 $ETH ($36.73) to buy 1.69T $PEPE within 30 minutes after $PEPE started trading, and then sold for 1,001 $ETH ($1.73M), realizing a gain of 54,725x.https://t.co/LI7qxGghDr pic.twitter.com/P9N82QXv4N
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 26, 2023
As the news of a possible Pepe rug pull spread on the internet last Friday, an early buyer dumped about 932 billion of the meme coin for about 524 ETH, worth approximately $870k.
Meanwhile, the remaining Pepe coin team has vowed to return the meme coin’s lost glory after shedding the baggage.
“Since its inception, $PEPE has unfortunately been plagued by inner strife with a portion of the team being bad actors led by big egos and greed. $PEPE is now entirely free of this baggage, with clear roads ahead. There has often been conflict, and the majority of the team involved in $PEPE creation started to distance themselves after the first week of project inception,” The Pepe team updated the community after the incident.
Forward, the remaining balance, about 10 trillion Pepe coins, in the multi-sig wallet is expected to facilitate future developments, and the remaining sent to a burn address. Nevertheless, the incident has caused a lot of anger in the Pepe community who believes it was an organized heist by the core developers.
Price Action
According to our latest crypto price oracles, Pepe’s price traded around $0.000000865 after closing last week on a crucial support level. Should the Pepe bearish outlook continue in the coming days and weeks, experts believe the meme coin will have a challenging time rebounding in the future. Moreover, there are other emerging meme coins with a vibrant online ecosystem and deep liquidity.
