Pepe (PEPE) Catapults to 19th Largest Crypto Surpassing Litecoin

Key Takeaways:

• Popular meme coin Pepe (PEPE) achieved a market cap of over $7 billion on May 27th, 2024, making it one of the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies.
• PEPE has rocketed ahead of its competition, surpassing established projects like Litecoin, high throughput projects like Hedera, and stablecoins, including DAI.

Pepe (PEPE) is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 meme coin with a fixed maximum supply of 420,690,000,000,000 tokens. It hit a new all-time high early on Monday, rallying to a peak of $0.00001725. This marks an 81% rally in the past seven days on Binance. As the project utilizes a deflationary mechanism, the circulating supply is steadily decreasing, helping to add value to the PEPE token.

Pepe currently ranks as the 19th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization on Coinmarketcap, surpassing well-established projects such as Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, Hedera, and Cosmos.

The project was launched in 2023 as a tribute to the world-famous internet meme Pepe The Frog. It aimed to capitalize on the popularity of projects like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). However, the asset captured the hearts of investors worldwide and quickly surged in value.

In 2023, PEPE hit a market cap of over $1.6 billion, leading to a frenzy as early investors made millions while new enthusiasts poured money into the project, hoping to enjoy similar returns. While some investors claimed that PEPE was a fad that would drop to zero, the project has dispelled naysayers, hitting a market cap of over $7 billion this year, even temporarily flipping Polygon (MATIC).

BREAKING: MEMECOIN $PEPE (@pepecoineth) FLIPS $MATIC (@0xPolygon) IN MARKET CAP pic.twitter.com/JdpSV4cQhy

— DEGEN NEWS 🗞️ (@DegenerateNews) May 27, 2024

Meme Coins Are Surging

Meme coins are cryptocurrency projects that a person creates based on a meme or popular culture. Some meme coins are considered jokes. However, others, like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, command market caps in the tens of billions.

One meme coin survives for every ten that fail to gain traction or otherwise die. That said, the meme coins have yielded massive profits for early investors.

LookOnChain reported on X.com that one user invested just $3,000 in April 2023. However, this investor has just realized profits of $7.4 million, with nearly $39 million worth of PEPE still sitting in a wallet.

Earned more than $46M on $PEPE with only $3K, a gain of 15,718x!😱

This super big winner sold 255B $PEPE($2.3M) for profits again after the price of $PEPE increased.

He spent only $3K to buy 4.9T $PEPE($56M currently) on Apr 15, 2023, and sold 1.41T $PEPE for $7.4M, with 3.5T… pic.twitter.com/VKGxmK9gCt

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 15, 2024

The Future of Pepe

As we look forward, it's difficult to predict where PEPE could end up. PEPE is in a strong position and will likely enjoy massive media attention each time it increases its market cap ranking.

Whales, who hold over 1% of the circulating supply, own over 45% of PEPE. Thousands of savvy investors are pilling money into PEPE, meaning sellers could significantly affect the asset's value.

Seeing how PEPE performs in the upcoming bull run will be interesting. As things stand, however, the future is looking bright for the meme coin.