Pepe: The Unkillable Frog 🐸
When the memecoin market crashed 50% in Q1 2025, most frog and dog coins got sent to the digital graveyard.
But Pepe? This green croaker refuses to die.
Trading at $0.00001377 with a $5.7 billion market cap, it's still the third-largest memecoin after surviving every "memecoin winter" thrown at it.
Even billion-dollar Bitcoin traders are now aping into Pepe positions. Is this frog actually immortal, or just the beneficiary of the internet's shortest attention span?
And why are whales suddenly treating a cartoon amphibian like a legitimate investment?
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📣 The Promise
Back in April 2023, some anonymous devs launched Pepe coin as a "tribute to the most memeable meme in internet existence." No team, no roadmap, no utility. Just pure unadulterated meme energy built on Ethereum.
The pitch was beautifully honest.
"PEPE is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return. The coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only."
At least they were upfront about it being pointless.
Where does it get mental?
Within weeks of launch, it surged 7,000% and hit a $1.6 billion market cap by May 2023. The internet collectively lost its mind over a cartoon frog. Pepe absolutely exploded.
Fast forward to May 27, 2025, and Pepe is still here, still trading, still somehow relevant.
Price: $0.00001376
Market cap: $5.7 billion
24-hour volume: $1.2 billion
Ranking: #32 overall, #3 among memecoins
The frog refuses to die.
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🔍 The Reality
Let's be brutally honest about what happened in 2025.
The memecoin sector got absolutely rekt in Q1, with the overall market cap declining 50% and trading volume dropping 63%. Most memecoins got sent to Valhalla.
But Pepe? Maintained a market cap between $5.3-5.78 billion throughout the chaos. Whilst other memecoins were getting liquidated into oblivion, Pepe holders were... well, still holding worthless frog JPEGs, but valuable worthless frog JPEGs.
Read: Game, Set and Death for Memecoins?💀
From May 2024 to May 2025, the total memecoin market cap peaked around $110 billion in late 2024 before dropping to $50-60 billion by early 2025, mirroring the 50% crash we mentioned. While Dogecoin and Shiba Inu still dominate in raw market cap, Pepe’s share of the memecoin pie has stayed resilient, often outperforming the sector’s overall trend.
Unlike flash-in-the-pan tokens like GHIBILI, which hit $30 million before crashing to nothing, or Conor McGregor’s memecoin that couldn’t even raise $400K from 668 bidders, Pepe’s consistency is what sets it apart. It’s the benchmark that keeps croaking while others croak.
Read: The Knockout: McGregor's Token Failure 🥋
What's keeping this frog alive?
Cultural juggernaut: Pepe the Frog, born in 2005, isn’t just a meme. It’s a cultural icon that started the memecoin craze. Its community thrives on X, where influencers and fans keep the hype alive, making Pepe a “lindy meme” that grows stronger with time.
Major exchange listings: Listings on Coinbase and Robinhood in November 2024 gave Pepe legitimacy it probably didn’t deserve. Retail investors love clicking buttons on familiar apps.
Whale activity: Massive players keep accumulating. Recent data shows 2 trillion PEPE tokens withdrawn from Bybit, coinciding with a 4.44% price rise. Someone with serious money believes in cartoon frogs.
Market savvy: Pepe hit the scene early enough to ride the memecoin wave before it got crowded, cementing its spot as a beta play that thrives when crypto markets pump.
Simplicity and adaptability: No complex tokenomics here; just a straightforward coin that evolves with market shifts, dodging regulatory traps and sentiment swings.
🧠 The Verdict
Whilst everyone was writing obituaries for memecoins, some absolute mad lad calling himself “James Wynn” made headlines by closing a $1.2 billion Bitcoin position (with a $17.5 million loss) and immediately aping into... Pepe. This trader put $1 million into PEPE at 10x leverage, immediately making $500,000 profit as the coin pumped 6%. After walking away from billion-dollar Bitcoin trades, he chose a cartoon frog as his next play, a move that screams confidence in Pepe’s unkillable vibe.
What does this tell us?
Either this trader has completely lost his mind, or Pepe’s reputation as a memecoin benchmark is drawing sophisticated money. The frog is setting the standard for what memecoins can be: a cultural and crypto industry milestone.
Because Pepe is the coin that made 4-digit percentage gains in hours seem possible. It's the memecoin benchmark, the cultural milestone, and the bar all frogcoins try — and fail—to reach.
Pepe has survived multiple “death” cycles already. Every time someone declares memecoins finished, this frog croaks its way back to relevance, often mirroring the memecoin market’s swings but holding stronger demand than its peers.
The reality is that Pepe has achieved something rare in crypto: genuine brand recognition beyond the crypto bubble. When traditional media mentions memecoins, they talk about Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and increasingly, Pepe. Its cultural roots, community buzz on X, and early-mover advantage make it a “lindy meme” that feels unkillable: the longer it lasts, the stronger it gets.
In a space full of governance tokens, utility coins, and world-computer blockchains, sometimes the market just wants to trade cartoon frogs. That’s exactly what Pepe provides — a cultural milestone that started a trend and refuses to croak. The meme coin that promised to be completely useless has become one of the most persistent tokens in crypto, setting the standard for memecoins everywhere.
Ribbit.
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The Week That Was 🗓️
GameStop has officially announced its first Bitcoin acquisition, purchasing 4,710 BTC.
A social media prankster who attended Donald Trump's memecoin holder dinner criticised the food as "worst food ever" and Trump's speech as "bullshit."
Nvidia is developing a new, lower-cost AI chip for the Chinese market, after US export restrictions limited sales of its more advanced chips in China.
Standard Chartered views Solana as potentially becoming a "one-trick pony" due to its heavy reliance on memecoin trading.
Web3 developer platform Alchemy has acquired HeyMint, a no-code NFT launchpad, for an undisclosed sum.
Luxury fashion brand 9dcc, known for linking physical apparel to NFTs via NFC chips, is ceasing operations at the end of May.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev predicts that AI will lead to the rise of "single-person companies.”
Upcoming Launches 🔍
Isabelita Virtual's "Soledad" NFT: Short Film Explores Disconnection.
Galerie Met presents "Soledad" by Isabelita Virtual, a 7-item NFT collection featuring a short film. The work explores themes of solitude and the human need for connection in a hyperconnected society.
Off the Grid: Avalanche Shooter Plots June Steam Launch. Avalanche-powered battle royale shooter Off the Grid is gradually moving players to its GUNZ mainnet, enabling real crypto trading of in-game items. The game is slated to expand to PC platform Steam in June, despite Steam's 2021 ban on blockchain games.
Upcoming Token Unlocks: May 28 - June 1. This week's notable token unlocks starting today include: $IOTA (May 28th, $3.19M), $FET (May 28th, $2.82M), $OP (May 31st, $23.98M), $SUI (June 1st, $159.26M), $ZETA (June 1st, $11.28M), and $DYDX (June 1st, $5.08M). One unlock already occurred: $EIGEN (May 27th, $1.94M). Investors should monitor these events.
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