Pepe, a new memecoin, experienced a significant price decline of more than 42%, only a few days after reaching its all-time high on May 6, resulting in at least one investor sitting on paper losses of hundreds of thousands. Blockchain analytics service Lookonchain reported that a crypto “whale” bought 962.3 billion Pepe tokens using 70 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and 470 Ether (ETH) on May 5, paying an average price of $0.000003122. Since then, PEPE has fallen by 42%, and the crypto investor’s holdings are currently estimated to be worth just $2.4 million, leading to unrealized losses of more than $600,000.
Despite the recent drop in price, Pepe still has a market capitalization of just over $1 billion, making it the 45th largest cryptocurrency by overall valuation. Pepe has attracted widespread attention since its inception on April 14, with over $636 million in trading volume within the last 24 hours, and has burned more than 5,000 ETH in related gas fees via Uniswap trading as of May 5.
Although the memecoin has experienced extreme price volatility, the number of individual holders has grown steadily over the last three weeks, with 144,534 individual token holders at the time of publication. The emergence of memecoin mania has driven fees on the Bitcoin network to surge to their highest levels in the past two years, following an enormous spike in Bitcoin activity involving BRC-20-related transactions.
