PEPE, the meme-coin inspired by Pepe The Frog, is ending the year in a bull run compared to the day of its launch, which took place only in April 2023. But how did the project experience its first year of life? Among the various events, there is the accusation (and then the apologies) from Coinbase for defining it as a “symbol of hate”.
Summary
PEPE: the 2023 of the meme-coin starts with accusations and apologies from Coinbase
Pepe, inspired by the famous meme circulating on the Internet, Pepe The Frog, is finishing its first year of life.
Launched in mid-April 2023, PEPE has been immediately placed in the crypto meme category along with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, entertaining the crypto community for a while.
In terms of price, PEPE is now up +2115% since its launch day, but the chart shows that May 2023 recorded its annual high.
In that same month, PEPE also experienced a bizarre incident involving the major crypto-exchange Coinbase.
Specifically, an email newsletter sent to Coinbase customers on May 10th sparked controversy within the crypto-community, as it defined PEPE as a “symbol of hate.”
On X, during that period, the community expressed all its dissatisfaction and started circulating the hashtag #deletecoinbase, to defend the crypto meme.
And so, the day after, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, would publicly apologize with a tweet:
“We made a mistake and we apologize. Yesterday we shared an overview of the meme coin $pepe to provide a fact-based perspective on a trending topic. We did not provide a complete picture of the meme’s history and we apologize to the community.”
PEPE and the price trend of the meme-coin after the Coinbase incident
Starting from June 2023 until today, PEPE has seen its price return to slightly higher levels than at launch, without ever reaching the May 2023 price of $0.000003734.
At the time of writing, PEPE is worth 0.000001259$, which can be considered (roughly) an average price, considering the last six months of 2023.
Its current market cap, instead, now exceeds $525 million, placing the meme crypto at the 102nd position in the overall crypto market capitalization ranking, provided by CoinMarketCap.
A significant price drop that raised concerns for crypto investors, occurred in the month of August, when developers reportedly executed transfers of PEPE on various crypto exchanges without any notice or explanation.
It was indeed a transfer of 3.8% of the total token supply.
After October, however, it seems that the situation has recovered, bringing the price of PEPPER back to current levels.
Are crypto memes still fun?
Recently, there has been talk about the most famous crypto memes like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Bonk, and, of course, PEPE, wondering if their projects still entertain the crypto community.
Each of them has a story behind it that is very different from the others, but it seems that the category of crypto memes has as its goal to lift the spirit of the crypto market.
So while Dogecoin broke the ice as the first meme dog in the market, supported later by Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, then all the others arrived.
Shiba Inu, for example, has climbed the podium of crypto memes as the antagonist of Dogecoin. While BONK of the Solana ecosystem, it seems to have achieved its goal among the followers of the main blockchain.
PEPE, on the contrary, is not a little dog and does not belong to a specific ecosystem, it is completely an original meme project.
Unfortunately, however, in the discussion, there are those who argue that the inspiration from Pepe The Frog, and not its direct connection, could have led the crypto community to overvalue PEPE.
