Pepe Coin Frenzy Turns to Fear After Anonymous Developers Make Changes to Wallet, Transfer Tokens: Report

Pepe Coin, the memecoin that rose to viral popularity after its launch in April this year, is now stirring fear in the crypto community. In the last few hours, the value of PEPE dived by 15 percent to currently trade at $0.0000008727 (roughly Rs. 0.000072). The dip in PEPE's price action came after its developers reportedly modified its multi-signature wallet and announced it to the PEPE community. This change in the wallet system resulted in the outflows of millions from the memecoin's ecosystem.

Pepe coin's multi-signature wallet, which is handled by its developers, previously required at least five out eight developers to use their private keys and approve transactions for the project on the blockchain. Now, PEPE transactions only require two developers as signatories for approval.

Following this change, the PEPE team suspiciously moved 16 trillion tokens amounting to $15 million (roughly Rs. 123 crore) from PEPE's multi-sig wallet into four centralised exchanges, a report by FXStreet said on Friday.

These factors have triggered a climate of FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — among the PEPE community. Many have taken to social media to address their fears about the memecoin's market movement.

Some fear that the PEPE project may be a rug-pull scam, where developers gather funds and abandon the project leaving investors high and dry.

As for now, PEPE's verified handle @pepecoineth on X remains active with over 476,000 followers.

The last tweet from this handle, however, was posted days ago on August 12. No member from PEPE's developer team has addressed the concerns of the community members yet.

Currently, over 391 trillion PEPE tokens are in circulation out of its pre-decided total supply of over 420 trillion tokens. Its current market cap, down by 20.48 percent in the last 24 hours, stands at $342 million (roughly Rs. 2,834 crore) as per CoinMarketCap.

The frenzy before fear

Supported on the Ethereum blockchain, Pepe Coin, also signified as the $PEPE token, debuted discreetly in the crypto market on April 16, 2023. The developers of the project have chosen to remain anonymous.

To lure in investors, PEPE developers had put in place a ‘no tax policy' on PEPE that eliminated gas fee charges on Pepe transactions.

In the first seventeen days of its launch, the PEPE token had spiked by 7,000 percent, reportedly having touched a market cap of $1.8 billion (roughly Rs. 14,883 crore) by May 5.

The meme coin was inspired by a cartooned frog that often finds its way on popular Internet memes with expressions tailored to depict the relatable feeling behind the meme.