Pepe (PEPE), which was just introduced weeks ago, suddenly into the list of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, with a market cap worth more than $500 million.
This week, however, its price has increased dramatically over the last few days, by an astounding 638%, with gains of 90% only in the last 24 hours. The asset's market value has also risen dramatically to more than $800 million.
Although Pepe the Frog NFTs and tokens have been released on several occasions over the years, the most recent PEPE token has been particularly fortunate in grabbing the market's attention.
In just a few days, one investor even turned $250 in PEPE into $1.02 million.
On April 15, they exchanged 0.125 Ethereum for 5.9 trillion PEPE tokens to purchase the coin.
The trade's value then increased to $1 million as PEPE increased by nearly 40,7900% in four days; the wallet still contains 3.9 trillion coins, which are currently valued at slightly over $5.3 million.
In this article, we talk about what exactly is going on with PEPE, and why its market cap has suddenly risen to the $700 million zone almost overnight.
The market's general health following the Fed's most recent interest rate hike, or the fact that whales are now massively trading PEPE are two potential explanations for the sharp increase from $500 million to almost a billion.
.According to CoinGlass data, short (sell) trades against PEPE suffered losses of at least $8 million on several exchanges during the course of the previous day, with traders suffering the largest losses of about $4 million on OKX.
Another $2 million was lost by traders on Huobi, $3 million on Bybit, and a few hundred thousand on BitMEX. In the last week, all of these exchanges introduced trading in PEPE futures.
Only the liquidations of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) futures, which often result in the worst futures losses, were worse than Pepe losses.
By market cap, PEPE is now the 61st largest cryptocurrency asset, surpassing several other notable coins including Terra Classic (LUNC), Optimism (OP), Huobi Token (HT), BitTorrent (BTT), MakerDAO (MKR), USDD, and others.
Pepe's market worth has skyrocketed, and there is a strong possibility that it may soon surpass $1 billion.
Some crypto whales appear to have taken notice of the current trending token's sharp price rise and are starting to jump on the bandwagon.
One of these whales reportedly exchanged practically all of his assets for PEPE, according to a tweet from blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain.
To be more precise, this whale traded 1.72T PEPE for $590,000 worth of WBTC, $90,000 worth of CULT, $235,000 worth of UNI, and $37,000 worth of ETH. According to the platform, the investor made a profit of more than $1 million on paper.
Other whales have also jumped on the PEPE train, and have raked in massive amounts of profit.
A specific holder exchanged 3.4B PEPE for 925 ETH, which at the time of the transaction was worth $1.8 million, according to a tweet from Spot On Chain. The ROI on this transaction was 1,650x in just two weeks.
Another element that may have drawn new investors and raised the price of PEPE is the excitement and hype that has been created around it.
People are known to follow escalating trends and feel compelled to participate in projects that have attracted a lot of media attention. The phrase "Fear of Missing Out" (FOMO) describes this situation.
As illustrated above, the memecoin's RSI is still in the bullish zone and has not hit overbought levels yet on the 30M chart, despite the recent bullishness.
This would indicate that the bulls are still in control, and have a firm grip on the memecoin's direction.
Will PEPE continue to rise further and compete with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, or will the hype die along with the bullishness on PEPE?
Only time will tell.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.