Blockchain data casts doubt on Memecoin Pepe’s “for the people” launch narrative. New evaluation suggests that just about a 3rd of the initial offering was held by a single company, contributing to strong early selling pressure.
About 30% of the Pepe (PEPE) token supply was pooled at launch in April 2023, blockchain data visualization platform Bubblemaps claimed in a post on X on Wednesday, adding that investors were “lied to.”
According to Bubblemaps, the identical wallet cluster sold $2 million price of PEPE tokens the day after the launch, leading to significant selling pressure that prevented the token from surpassing the $12 billion mark.
This concentration of the Genesis offering stands in contrast to Pepe's original brand as a “coin for the people.” The project's website said the token was launched “secretly” with none pre-sale allocations.
Source: Bubblemaps
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the value of PEPE has fallen by 5.7% within the last 24 hours and is down over 81% prior to now 12 months.
Cointelegraph was unable to succeed in the team behind PEPE for comment.
Adding to investors' concerns, Pepe's website was exploited in early December, temporarily redirecting users to a malicious Inferno drainer, a fraud tool used for phishing attacks, wallet drainers, and social engineering scams.
Despite PEPE's drawbacks, some crypto traders managed to make thousands and thousands of dollars using the memecoin.
In March, a trader turned an initial investment of $2,000 into $43 million by owning PEPE. The trader made a $10 million profit on his position after enduring a 74% decline from PEPE's all-time high before selling.
Forensics tool targets insider-heavy launches
The latest findings were revealed by Bubblemaps' Time Travel feature, a forensic evaluation tool launched in May that enables Web3 users to reconstruct the historical distribution of tokens with the aim of detecting early insider activity or coordinated accumulation efforts to forestall rug pulls and memecoin scams.
Identifying tokens where a big portion of supply is concentrated in just a few wallets can assist investors detect scams like rug pulls, where insiders withdraw liquidity or stage a mass sale, leading to a pointy price drop that leaves investors worthless tokens.
Bubblemaps played a key role in uncovering suspicious wallet activity related to several memecoins, including the Melania token and various fake Eric Trump-themed memecoins.
In one of the devastating crashes this 12 months, the Wolf of Wall Street-inspired WOLF token plummeted 99% in a matter of hours, wiping out nearly $42 million in market capitalization on March 16.
The token was created by Hayden Davis, the co-creator of the official Melania Meme (MELANIA) and the Libra token.
