Unknown meme coin Pepe becomes billion-dollar sensation

Thuy Tien, an office worker in HCMC, said since the end of April, just after Pepe was launched, meme coins have been the main topic of discussion in every cryptocurrency group.

Skeptical, she bought 25 million Pepe tokens for US$10, and a week later its value had zoomed 10-fold.

Other meme coins also went through the roof, making the market vibrant again.

According to crypto price tracking website Coinmarketcap, Pepe was launched on April 14, and hit its peak on May 5 at $0.000004, a 6,000% spike.

Meme coin Pepe’s price chart from April 14 to May 8. Photo by Coinmarketcap

What sets Pepe apart is that it is based on Bitcoin’s BRC-20 standard instead of Ethereum’s ERC-20 unlike other meme coins that have attracted a frenzy.

On the project homepage, its developer said: "$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."

Despite such disclaimers, new coins like Pepe attract a lot of investment.

This meme coin frenzy is also widely thought to be the reason why Binance had to stop Bitcoin withdrawals twice due to extremely high pending transaction volumes on May 7 and 8.

According to mempool.space, an open-source real-time data tracker for the Bitcoin community, there were 400,000 pending transactions the first time and 485,000 the second time.

By tracing large transactions, analysts showed that a large number of people made huge profits from Pepe.

Web3 data analysis company Lookonchain said there were five notable addresses that made $1.23 million by buying 8.87 trillion Pepe tokens.

There is no official definition yet for meme coins.

While talking about them, people usually think of coins inspired by Internet memes or real life events.

Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, meme coins are made merely for entertainment.

However, U.S. business publication Forbes has contended that meme coins have gone from being a joke to having their own standing. Dogecoin and Shiba used to be among the world's largest coins by market cap.

Pepe ranked 52nd as of May 8.

Pepe is the new craze in the meme coin community. Photo by VnExpress/Khuong Nha

The common themes of meme coins are that they often follow current viral events, have very short lifespans, and their prices can quickly peak and then plummet.

This also makes them a great tool for scammers.

In November 2021 the price of a meme coin inspired by hit Korean TV series Squid Game rose by 230,000% to $2,860 within a week. Its developer then vanished with $3.3 million worth of investors’ money, and its value went back to zero.