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The popularity of meme coins seems to be coming again?
PEPE – A new Ethereum-based token, named after the anime character Pepe the Frog, has become a hot topic that has taken the crypto community by storm. Its market cap soared to $110 million in less than five days, making it the sixth highest meme token by market cap in the CoinGecko Meme rankings. The data shows that as of press time, PEPE is up 48% in 24 hours, and trading volume hovers around $153 million. Since April 17, the price of the token has risen by more than 5,200%, from $0.00000005361 to $0.0000002865.
According to data tracked by Lookonchain, an early investor in PEPE turned $250 into $1.14 million in four days, making more than 4,500 times more profit. Note that PEPE has nothing to do with Pepe the Frog meme itself or its creator, Matt Furie.
Inspired by PEPE's rally, another similar project, WOJAK, was born, named after the popular bald man meme Wojak (also known as Feels Guy), which soared to $10 million in less than two days after its launch on April 17.
History is always strikingly similar, and the speculators who caught these meme tokens early made a fortune, reminiscent of the various "animal" coin frenzy of 2021, with DOGE and SHIB rising to all-time highs.
Why is PEPE so popular?
Like most users who invest in Meme projects, crypto traders are initially attracted by the influence of PEPE memes, the high returns that come with high volatility.
Compared to blue-chip cryptocurrencies with relatively low volatility, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, memes are highly volatile in price and are often seen as high-risk, high-reward assets.
Most Meme coins are particularly sensitive to news or external events, so they usually trend for a short period of time and then cool down quickly. Explaining the sudden spike in PEPE prices, blockchain intelligence firm Arkham said on Twitter that an Ethereum account bought 1.82 trillion PEPEs for $20, a significant portion of the token's net circulation. After the whale purchase, other investors jumped in, making the position worth more than $150,000. Although the whale sold the token early, the rally continued for a long time.
At the time of writing, PEPE tokens are only available in four Uniswap pools: PEPE/ETH, PEPE/PEPES, WOJAK/PEPE, and PEPE/USDC, which have a total value of over $1.5 million locked.
What other Meme coins are likely to rise?
In addition to meme coin originators Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, some new meme coins may also have hype potential and have unique use cases. For example, Tamadoge supports a Shiba Inu-themed web3 gaming ecosystem under development called Tamaverse. The Tamadoge team is currently working to expand the already launched Tamadoge Arcade, which allows users to play and compete with various games using Tamadoge NFTs while earning TAMA tokens. TAMA can be purchased on various cryptocurrency exchanges and will soon be launched on several leading cryptocurrency exchanges, which could fuel its rise.
Investors are reminded to do their due diligence before making any relevant investments.
Double-edged sword"
The Pepe Coin hype has had a significant impact on the booming crypto meme economy, proving once again how hot memes can evolve into digital assets with real-world value and thriving communities. Pepe captures the essence of Internet culture, and in addition to mass entertainment and emotional output, it can also penetrate the financial sector.
Ryan Watkins, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Syncracy Capital, believes that the success of the Meme token has had a complex impact on the digital asset space. He said in Telegram: "It's a double-edged sword, on the one hand, Meme makes cryptocurrencies more interesting and accessible. On the other hand, they reiterate the criticism of many skeptics that the only use case for the crypto industry is gambling."
Anonymous crypto expert Altcoin Sherpa told investors in his recent tweet that Meme coins are the best investment if they want to quickly reap exponential gains.
According to Sherpa, meme tokens can do something that "normal" tokens like Bitcoin cannot, which is to rise 500x in a matter of days, which is also a lot of warning to investors.
Sherpa said: "Meme coins will mostly rug pull, without any productivity, zero effort to make, and mainly for the biggest gambler in the crypto market, DEGEN, the probability of you being rugged in these meme games is very high, I really do not recommend it to many people".
"DEGEN" is defined as investors who like/want to take significant risks with their money by investing in highly speculative projects, and this segment of the population usually does not do much (or any) due diligence on the projects they invest in.
Has the value of meme coins stood the test?
The real-world use cases and true value of Meme coins may not stand the test.
Anonymous crypto KOLPunk6529 has developed an NFT project that claims that internet memes are "the most promising thing in the world" and that popular memes will rise in the NFT world. And according to data provider NFTGo, the project's The Memes has now fallen nearly 75% to around 15,000 ETH after peaking at 59,000 ETH in mid-January.
Ryan Watkins, co-founder of Syncracy Capital, believes that the meme coin phenomenon won't hurt the industry much in the long run. "It does get tiring after a while, but speculation attracts money into the industry to fund new interesting projects, and I don't think meme coins are stealing resources from 'real' projects," Watkins wrote. ”
Perhaps, for some avid traders, Meme Coin is a placebo for them to survive the bear market, or maybe it offers a glimmer of hope that the bear market may actually be over.