Pepe (PEPE) is a memecoin ERC-20 cryptocurrency inspired by the Pepe the Frog meme created by Matt Furie. The token is not affiliated with Matt Furie or his creation Pepe the Frog. The token was first minted and launched on April 14, 2023. ^[1]

On May 5, 2023, PEPE passed a $1 billion market cap after Binance announced they would be listing PEPE in their Innovation Zone. ^[7]

Overview

Pepe describes itself as a simple memecoin with the mission of "making meme coins great again" on its website.

Pepe is tired of watching everyone play hot potato with the endless derivative ShibaCumGMElonKishuTurboAssFlokiMoon Inu coins. The Inu’s have had their day. It’s time for the most recognizable meme in the world to take his reign as king of the memes.

Pepe is here to make memecoins great again. Launched stealth with no presale, zero taxes, LP burnt and contract renounced, $PEPE is a coin for the people, forever. Fueled by pure memetic power, let $PEPE show you the way. In Lord Kek we trust.

Pepe also describes itself as a memecoin with no intrinsic value:

$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.

The project team has stated that they will never have airdrops, staking, or require signatures to reduce the risk of that the PEPE community will fall for scams. ^[6]

Periodical reminder that $PEPE will never be having any airdrops, staking, or links for you to connect your wallet to stay safe and protect your assets from the many scams and Pepe imitations going around.^[6]

Growth

The PEPE token was created on April 14, 2023, and grew quickly seeing rapid price growth passing a $100 million market cap by April 19, 2023. On April 19, 2023, the token saw more than $90 million in volume on Uniswap V2 alone. ^{[2] [3]}

The volume of transactions on the Ethereum network increased rapidly with the rise of trading PEPE and other meme tokens causing gas prices to spike on April 19, 2023. After the rise of PEPE, several other Internet meme-inspired tokens launched including chad, wojak, and babypepe. ^[4]

On June 22nd, 2023, they celebrated breaching 125K on-chain PEPE holders, while also celebrating a 60% spike in PEPE's price. ^[14]

124,676 holders on Ethereum, 5.7K holders on BSC, and 997 holders on Arbitrum.

Exchange Listings

On May 1, 2023, $PEPE's market cap passed $400 million after OKX announced they would be listing the token. PEPE was previously listed on MEXC Global, Bitget, Gate.io, and Huobi. ^[5]

On May 5, 2023, $PEPE passed a $1 billion market cap after Binance announced that $PEPE would be listed on the exchange as part of its Innovation Zone. ^[7]

On May 5, 2023, $PEPE was listed on Kucoin while maintaining trade volumes of 500 million.^[12]

On May 9, 2023, $PEPE was listed on Gemini, with swaps available to USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, HKD, and SGD pairs. ^[13]

On June 28, 2023, Gemini announced that they had added a PEPE/GUSD perpetual contract on their Gemini Derivatives platform with up to 100 times leverage. ^[15]

Coinbase Apology

On May 10, 2023, Coinbase published a newsletter that described the Pepe the Frog meme as having been “co-opted as a hate symbol by alt-right groups.” This description angered many Pepe fans, who argued that the meme is not inherently racist or hateful. Pepe supporters called for a boycott of Coinbase and the hashtag #deletecoinbase became a trending topic with more than 180,000 tweets. ^[9]

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal apologized to the Pepe community on May 11, 2023, one day after the controversy began in a tweet:

We screwed up and we are sorry. Yesterday we shared an overview of the $pepe meme coin to provide a fact-based picture of a trending topic. This did not provide the whole picture of the history of the meme and we apologize to the community. ^[11]

The history of the Pepe the Frog meme began with Matt Furie creating a cartoon frog character named Pepe in 2005. In 2008, the meme became popular on sites including Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chanThe meme. In 2015 and 2016 the meme was also co-opted by some white supremacist and alt-right groups, who used it to spread racist and hateful messages. However, Furie, the creator of the meme, condemned the meme as a hate symbol and successfully sued hate groups who used the meme. In 2019, Pepe was used by protesters in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests without any connection to the alt-right. ^[8]

Tokenomics

The token has a total supply of 420,690,000,000,000. 93.1% of the tokens were sent to an ETH-PEPE liquidity pool on Uniswap, LP tokens were burnt, and the contract was renounced. The remaining 6.9% of the supply is being held in a multi-sig team wallet only to be used as tokens for future centralized exchange listings, bridges, and liquidity pools. This wallet is trackable under the ENS “pepecexwallet.eth”. ^[1]

16 Trillion $PEPE Theft

In August 2023, three ex-team members, acting as rogue developers, stole funds from the Pepe multisig wallet. They misappropriated 16 trillion $PEPE tokens, which were valued at $15 million. This unexpected breach caused turmoil within the PEPE community. ^[16][19]

The tokens were illicitly transferred to several crypto exchanges, including OKX, Binance, Kucoin, and Bybit, before being sold. As a result, the value of the frog-themed PEPE tokens experienced a nearly 20% decline. ^[16]

In response, someone with access to the project’s official X account posted an explanation for the mysterious transfers. Presumably, the explanation was intended to reassure project community members that all was well. The post had the opposite effect, however, and ended up raising even more concerns. ^[17]

“I have been in negotiation with the owners of some web domains and usernames that I am looking into acquiring for PEPE, and when I am complete with any of these prospective purchases or donations of PEPE from the multi-sig, I will burn the remainder of these multi-sig tokens,” the poster said. ^[18]

In October 2023, the official Pepe Coin X account shared that a new team of advisors would guide the project forward. The post began with an announcement that 6.9 trillion $PEPE tokens worth approximately $6,000,000 had been burned and permanently removed from the project’s supply. ^[17]