Is Pepe Coin Dead? The Future of the New Meme Coin

At the time of writing, PEPE is trading about 79% down from its all-time high. Of course, Pepe is a relatively unique example in the crypto market, as it reached its all-time high in early May, when the rest of the market was largely bearish. 

Even though it’s only been a month since the coin reached its all-time high, the hype around Pepe has seen a noticeable decline because the coin has been seeing almost exclusively bearish price action since the ATH.

So, is Pepe coin dead? In this article, we’ll explore if PEPE has a future or if this meme coin’s best days are already behind it. 

Is Pepe coin dead?

PEPE reached its peak on May 5, 2023, which was the same day that Binance announced it would be listing the token. This is not a coincidence — for a project like Pepe, it’s hard to imagine a bigger milestone than a listing on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. 

However, this also raises some concerns — now that PEPE is available on most of the top exchanges, what possible events could drive the Pepe coin price upwards in the future? At the moment, the answer to this question is unclear. 

The largest market cap Pepe has reached so far was $1.48 billion, but it has since fallen to $383 million. Despite its price crash, PEPE is still the third largest meme coin behind Dogecoin ($8.5 billion) and Shiba Inu ($3.9 billion). 

In terms of potential upside, there’s still quite a bit of room for PEPE to grow provided the conditions in the broader cryptocurrency market are favorable. Right now, we’re in a difficult period in the crypto markets that’s marked by regulatory scrutiny in the United States. The SEC has sued two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, which has had a very negative impact on altcoins.

We’ve seen meme coins reach much higher valuations in the past. Dogecoin has reached as high as $84.5 billion, while Shiba Inu topped out at about $43.5 billion. From this perspective, we could say that Pepe could still match and exceed its all-time high in the future, although this would likely require the broader cryptocurrency market to be much more bullish than it is now.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, PEPE’s trading volume has cooled off after its big rally in the first week of May. At its peak, the coin was seeing 24-hour trading volume of almost $1.9 billion, but it has since declined to slightly below $100 million.

However, the PEPE trading volume is still substantial. At the time of writing, PEPE has the 42nd highest trading volume among all cryptocurrencies, despite being ranked #86 in terms of market capitalization. In terms of trading activity, PEPE is still very much alive, although its important to acknowledge that trading volume has seen a significant decline. 

Why is Pepe going down?

From a fundamental perspective, Pepe has more in common with Dogecoin than it does with Shiba Inu. This is because the Shiba Inu project is trying to make SHIB a utility token used within an ecosystem of products.

Meanwhile, meme coins in the vein of Pepe and Dogecoin are taking a more hands-off approach and the coins are simply presented as internet meme coins that people can use as they please.

This hands-off approach has its pros and cons. On one hand, it means that users don’t have big expectations for the project. For example, we’ve seen plenty of cases where a crypto project hyped up an upcoming product or feature which turns out to be a disappointment upon release. 

The negative side of this approach is that it’s difficult for strong narratives to form around projects like Dogecoin and Pepe. Dogecoin owes much of its gains to Elon Musk, who has taken a liking to DOGE and occasionally showcases the cryptocurrency to his massive online following.

We have to keep in mind that Dogecoin has been around for almost a decade, and has solidified itself as a mainstay in the cryptocurrency market. Meanwhile, Pepe has only been on the market for a few months, and it’s unclear at the moment if it will have real staying power.

Pepe was one of the few coins performing well during a quiet period in the cryptocurrency market, which attracted a lot of attention and eventually made the coin go viral on social media. Once the hype became too big to ignore, major centralized exchanges like Binance listed the tokens, which provided another boost to PEPE. 

However, now that PEPE has already secured some of the most coveted exchange listings in the crypto industry, it’s very difficult to say what the next catalyst for the coin could be. The roadmap on the Pepe project’s website has some future milestones, but they are relatively vague. 

This is most likely the biggest reason why Pepe is going down. The coin has simply reached the biggest milestones that a meme crypto project can reach, and we’re yet to see a new narrative form around PEPE that would drive momentum in the market.

Pepe price prediction

The Pepe coin price prediction on CoinCodex is still very bullish, as it’s forecasting that PEPE will exceed its current all-time highs in a relatively short time frame. This bullish scenario is unlikely to play in reality unless we see a sudden bullish surge across the entire cryptocurrency market.

However, making predictions for a cryptocurrency such as PEPE is very difficult. The coin has a very short price history, and has been extremely volatile so far. We’ll likely get a better idea of how PEPE could perform over the long term once the coin has a longer price history and the market settles down into more predictable price ranges.

The bottom line - PEPE is down, but definitely not out

Although it has seen a considerable drop in price, PEPE is not dead. It’s still by far the most popular and valuable coin in the new wave of meme coins, and it has more trading volume than many coins that are larger in market capitalization. 

However, it’s worth exercising some caution with PEPE, especially since we’re in an uncertain period in the cryptocurrency markets and the project doesn’t seem to have a clear direction. Since PEPE has practically no utility, it rises and falls based on pure speculation, which is next to impossible to predict.

The silver lining is that users are still interested in Pepe. In fact, it is still the #1 trending coin among CoinCodex users even though it has seen a big drop from its all-time high price, and we’re seeing similar data on other crypto market aggregators. If people stop caring about PEPE, however, that could be a very bad sign as the coin doesn’t have strong fundamentals to fall back on. 

If you’re interested in other meme coins that have seen a big price decline, check out our article exploring Dogecoin’s chances for recovery.