Pepe (PEPE) Price

Pure meme, by design

PEPE was launched without warning on Ethereum on 14 April 2023, taking its name and imagery from Pepe the Frog. The project is not affiliated with the artist Matt Furie, who created the character, and its own materials state that the token has no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return.

That candour is part of its identity. There was no pre-sale, and the developers promoted it as a meme coin with no roadmap promises of products that would generate income for holders.

Token mechanics

The total supply is 420.69 trillion tokens, a figure chosen as an internet joke. Most of it went into a liquidity pool on a decentralised exchange, where the liquidity tokens were burned so that the pool could not be withdrawn, and the contract's ownership was renounced.

PEPE does not charge a tax on transfers, unlike some meme tokens that skim a percentage of each trade. It has no staking or governance function and no claim on any cash flows. Whatever value it has rests entirely on other people's willingness to buy it. Bridged versions also exist on some other networks, but the original contract is on Ethereum.

Trading a sentiment asset

PEPE's price is driven almost entirely by sentiment, social media momentum and the wider cycle in meme coins. There are no earnings or usage metrics to anchor value, which can lead to very large swings.

Major exchanges list PEPE with active perpetual futures, so leverage-driven liquidations can amplify moves. Large wallets hold sizeable positions, and their transfers to exchanges are often tracked by traders.

Copycat tokens with similar names exist on many networks, so anyone buying on a decentralised exchange should confirm the official contract address first. PEPE reached large centralised exchanges within weeks of launch in 2023, an illustration of how quickly attention can concentrate on a new meme token, and how quickly it can move on.

Frequently asked questions