Pepe Coin Surges 7500x – Meme Coins Are Back in 2023

Meme coins became mainstream popular in 2021 when Dogecoin saw a meteoric rise after Elon Musk began tweeting about the dog-based coin. This spawned many dog-based knockoffs that saw varying levels of success. The most successful spinoff coin was Shiba Inu, which is the 15th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap

Unfortunately, Dogecoin lost a lot of hype after Elon Musk admitted Dogecoin was “a hustle” on Saturday Night Live. The coin still ranks as the 9th biggest coin by market cap, but it was a long recovery from the Saturday Night Live fiasco. 

Anyway, meme coins were basically dead after the YouTuber Coffeezilla exposed SafeMoon as a suspected multi-billion dollar fraud in early 2022. The exposé from Coffeezilla put trust in new meme coin projects at an all-time low. Many in the cryptocurrency industry suspected that meme coins other than Shiba Inu and Dogecoin were dead forever. 

However, recent events in 2023 have proven that meme coins are certainly not dead. In fact, meme coins are alive and well. It looks like 2023 might be another great year for meme coins. This article will explain why meme coins could have an amazing year in 2023.

Meme Coins Do Well in Bull Markets

The first reason that meme coins are posed to do well in 2023 is obvious – meme coins do well in bull markets and horribly in bear markets. This is because meme coins rely on a large number of inexperienced investors hopping into them because of excitement caused by surging Bitcoin and Ethereum prices. 

This is good because 2023 looks like it might be a bull market. It certainly has the beginning signs of a bull market with the Federal Reserve planning on halting rate hikes and a Bitcoin halving occurring in April 2024. To keep an eye on the current price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, visit World Coin Stats.

Pepe Coin (PEPE) Surged 7500x

Pepe Coin is a meme coin launched on 16 April 2023 with no presale and no hype behind it. The token, it’s not a coin, was stealth launched on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token. 

The meme coin is based on the popular Pepe the Frog meme, which became a popular meme in 2008 and exploded in popularity around 2015. 

We are unsure why some meme coins stick and others fail, but Pepe Coin definitely stuck as the price surged 7,500x and the market cap ballooned to over $100 million USD in a matter of days. 

Anyway, a meme coin surging 7500x in four days is exactly what the meme coin market needs for people to get interested in it again. Twitter users and Redditors have already discovered wallets that turned $250 of PEPE into millions of dollars in less than a week. 

This one meme coin alone will generate hundreds of similar projects and has created enough hype to start another meme coin bull market. 

Will Pepe Coin Be The Next Shiba Inu?

Pepe Coin does give off Shiba Inu vibes with the marketing and meme-focused nature of the project. However, the smart contract for the project has some major issues. 45% of the top 100 wallets also hold PEPE tokens, which is not a great sign. 

It’s still too early to tell if this project will become a major meme coin or rug like so many meme coin projects before it, but it feels promising. 

The DOJ Indicted 5 People for Cryptocurrency Market Manipulation

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently indicted 5 people for market manipulation of the HYDRO cryptocurrency. The CEO of Hydro and the Chief Financial Engineering Officer of Hydro were both indicted. The CEO and CTO of a tech firm were indicted alongside an engineer for Hydro. 

The indictments allege that the co-conspirators created a trading bot that created false trades to artificially raise the price of HYDRO. The co-conspirators subsequently sold HYDRO tokens on the market at an artificially inflated price to unsuspecting investors for a profit of around $2 million USD.

This might seem irrelevant to meme coins, but it’s not. Many meme coins rely on trading bots artificially increasing the price of the tokens in order to garner publicity and dump the tokens on unsuspecting investors – exactly what the DOJ alleges happened with Hydro. 

It’s also important to note that the DOJ alleges that the Hydro market manipulation occurred in 2018, which shows that the DOJ will go after alleged crimes that occurred years in the past. 

The indictment should decrease the amount of fraud and manipulation in cryptocurrency, especially meme coins, as many founders do not want to risk jail time for market manipulation. This should increase the number of investors going into meme coins, which will only help the market. 

Note: People will still break the law despite the DOJ actively prosecuting cryptocurrency market manipulation cases. 

Twitter Replaced Its Logo With the Dogecoin Dog

A few weeks ago Twitter replaced its famous blue bird logo with the Dogecoin dog logo. This did not come as too much of a surprise as Elon Musk now owns Twitter and he has been the most high-profile supporter of Dogecoin for the past few years. 

Unfortunately, Twitter’s logo reverted back to the bird after a few days and the price of Doge fell about 10%. 

Despite that, it’s still a great sign for meme coins. First of all, Elon Musk owns Twitter. Musk loves Dogecoin, so he now has even more power to promote it. A popular Dogecoin means an influx of new meme coins, which is good for the industry.

More importantly, Musk has stated he wants to turn Twitter into an “everything app” similar to WeChat in China. It seems likely that he would start by offering cryptocurrency trading as it has fewer regulations. And meme coins seem like a place Musk would gravitate towards as he has been a big supporter of them as they are more fun than regular cryptocurrencies. 

Closing Words

To summarize, Pepe Coin’s massive explosion in popularity has led many to believe that the meme coin industry is back in 2023. It remains to be seen if this is an anomaly or the beginning to the next major meme coin bull market. All the signs point to a meme coin bull market, though.