The crypto bull market is in full force as Bitcoin hits new highs every other day; soon, it’ll be every few hours. And with that, the broad crypto market is having a blast, especially the meme coins.
The most popular and lucrative narrative of this cycle, meme coins offer investors the perfect opportunity to have fun and enjoy success with fellow meme lovers. From cats, dogs, and hippopotamuses, you can trade all kinds of cute animal tokens.
One particularly popular animal in the crypto sphere is ‘Pepe the Frog,’ which you can see posted all over Crypto Twitter (CT). Designed as a green frog with a humanoid body, ‘Pepe the Frog’ is a comic character and widely popular internet meme.
So, naturally, the meme has been represented by a token. And when you go looking for it, you’ll stumble across several options with PEPE right at the top. However, did you know that this PEPE is not the original ‘Pepe the Frog’ token?
Well, the original Pepe first made its presence some eight years ago when a community of passionate meme lovers came together to create a project that not only celebrates the essence of meme and meme culture but also delivers a collaborative and rewarding environment.
In March 2016, crypto OGs and memelord launched Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) as a proof-of-work mineable blockchain. A few months later, the coin was caught in the crossfire of meme war when the US presidential elections saw an unprecedented use of memes by both political factions in their campaigns.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) actually designated Pepe as a “hate symbol” but then later teamed with its creator Furie and supporters to form a #SavePepe campaign to help it regain its original glory.
For a brief moment, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) was even forced to adopt the name “Memetic” to get exchange listings. However, the project had faith and kept its name, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN), in its GitHub source code as well as on platforms like CoinMarketCap and X (Twitter).
While the team was busy preparing the launch of Pepecoin ERC20, a new project by the name “Pepe” made its way into the market in 2023. According to the official Pepecoin medium, the project was excited about the possibility of new collaborations and reached out to the ‘Pepe’ community only to be met with reproach, and so began Pepecoin’s comeback journey.
A Legacy Beyond Memes
Pepe’s launch ignited meme coin enthusiasm, which sent its prices from $0.00000130 at the beginning of 2024 to an ATH of $0.00001717 in May 2024.
At the time of writing, the 29th largest crypto with a market cap of $4.7 billion has been trading at $0.00001118, up 26% in the past week and 772% in the past year while down nearly 35% from its peak.
PEPE has a total supply of 420,690,000,000,000, all of which is circulating in the market. The meme coin is currently listed on major exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, OKX, and Kraken.
In contrast, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) has a total supply of just 133.7 million, 90% of which is circulating in the market. With a market cap of $646.4 million, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) is ranked 139.
When it comes to price, PEPECOIN is currently trading at $5.39, up 106% in the past week and 29,975% in the past year. The original Pepe coin is only 28.7% away from its ATH of $7.51 hit in April this year, after starting 2024 at only around $0.7.
This massive price action makes PEPECOIN a hot token for major CEX listings, especially during the ongoing bull market. While Pepe has already got its exchange listings and the subsequent rallies as a result of wider adoption and attention a token gets upon getting a top-tier exchange listing, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) is currently only available on DEXs like Uniswap.
These metrics are not the only difference between the two meme coins, though. While Pepe is purely a meme play with no team supporting its growth and expansion, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) has since been building a thriving ecosystem.
This includes the operating system Pepe OS, the decentralized messaging app Pepe Messenger, Pepe Paint NFT minting application Pepe Paint, the SocialFi platform MyFrens, the virtual world Kekspace, the decentralized NFT exchange Kekdaq, the launchpad Kekstarter, and more.
Kek.Bot is yet another project from the Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) community, which is a unique trading terminal that streamlines the trading experience for users by offering features like limit orders, portfolio management, a sniper bot, a token discovery scanner, mirror trading, and MEV blocking protection.
The most popular product of the Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) ecosystem, however, is BasedAI, a custom-engineered L1 that aims to revolutionize the way AI models are owned and participated in.
As AI mania takes over the crypto world, BasedAI has emerged as a prominent project enabling the development, deployment, and hosting of decentralized AI models. Ahead of $Based mainnet in November, the team launched a deflationary burn event that reduced PEPECOIN’s supply to make it even more scarce and valuable than it already is.
With so much happening in the Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) ecosystem, this low-cap coin with its original tag, attractive gains, potential future CEX listings, and BasedAI capturing the hot AI narrative, PEPECOIN seems poised to make its mark and take its rightful place!
