An investor who recently bought $3 million worth of Pepe memecoin is now facing a loss of over $600,000, as the token’s price has plummeted by over 42% from its all-time high, according to CoinGecko. The investor used 70 Wrapped Bitcoin and 470 Ether to purchase 962.3 billion Pepe tokens for an average price of $0.000003122 on May 5. Despite the recent decline, Pepe still holds a market capitalization of slightly over $1 billion, with over $636 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours. However, memecoins lack fundamentals, making investing in them highly risky.
Since its inception on April 14, Pepe has gained a lot of attention, with more than 144,534 individual holders of the token, according to data from Dune Analytics. Although the token has exhibited extreme price volatility, the number of individual holders has steadily increased over the past three weeks. Pepe’s popularity is evidenced by the significant trading volume and the fact that it has burnt over 5,000 ETH in related gas fees through Uniswap trading as of May 5. The rise of memecoins has also driven Bitcoin network fees to their highest level in the last two years, following a surge in Bitcoin activity involving BRC-20-related transactions.