Pepe came out as the "most memable memecoin", whatever that means, in April this year. I got some as soon as came to be listed on the exchange I trade with (since then sold most of it) and even bought a canvas print off eBay of Pepe. It has been popular yes, but the price has been moving sideways of late, however today (28/08/2023) we are witnessing a sharp drop. Why?
The beauty of the crypto market is, unlike the Forex or regular share market, that every transaction is visible on the blockchain, to anyone who wants to query it. It may be a good idea to learn how to do it, but for me it is sufficient that there are organisations that keep track of the blockchain movement and report when they find unusual activity.
Two significant entities, the Pepe multisig wallet and Wintermute Trading have moved a huge 17+ TRILLION PEPE coins to exchanges. Now let's digest that sentence for a minute. What is a multisig wallet? A multisig wallet in crypto lingo is a wallet that requires more than one private key for the transaction to happen (unlike the wallets that most of us hold which has only one private key and one public key). This particular wallet is said to be in the control of the developers of PEPE, but worryingly, the number of multiple keys needed to do transactions has been dropped from five (out of a total of 8) to 2 (/8) to authorise transactions. This raises all kinds of alarm bells in my head.
First off, developers moving stashed crypto to a trading exchange in such a large quantity does little for the level of confidence. They may not have any nefarious intentions, but perception is key, as markets react based on perception. And reacted the market has, with so much sales (as of this writing) that the price has dropped over 15%.
A single whale made a transaction valued at over US$ 1.6 million!
Is this market manipulation? I don't think so. But it certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth about PEPE, and makes me lose confidence in the currency and the team. At best, it's just some whales taking profit, and at worst ... I'll leave that to your imagination.
Disclaimer: None of what I write is financial advice and should not (or should) be acted on. You are responsible for your own actions and I do not assume any liability.
