$PEPE
$PEPE (ticker PEPE) is a cryptocurrency memecoin launched on the Ethereum blockchain in April 2023, themed on the internet meme Pepe the Frog. Created by an anonymous team and marketed with the classic memecoin disclaimers of "no roadmap" and "no intrinsic value," it became one of the largest and most widely traded memecoins during the 2023 memecoin boom, reaching a multi-billion-dollar market capitalization within weeks of launch.[1]
Launch and rise
$PEPE went live on April 17, 2023, as an ERC-20 token. Its anonymous creators launched it with no presale, no transaction taxes, and no official roadmap, positioning it as a pure meme asset in the lineage of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.[1] The token's market capitalization exceeded $100 million within five days and surpassed $1 billion within roughly three weeks, an ascent that made it a defining asset of the 2023 memecoin mania and drew rapid listings on major exchanges, including Binance in May 2023.[2] The coin produced a number of widely reported windfalls for early holders and became a byword for the speculative, attention-driven dynamics of memecoin trading.
Tokenomics
$PEPE launched with a fixed total supply in the trillions — a figure incorporating the meme numbers 420 and 69 — and a contract designed with no transaction tax and a portion of the supply allocated to a burn address and to centralized-exchange liquidity.[1] Consistent with the memecoin form, the project asserted no utility beyond community and speculation.
Team controversy
In August 2023, on-chain observers reported that tokens worth roughly sixteen million dollars had been moved out of the project's multi-signature wallet. The remaining members stated that three of the original founders had departed and removed the tokens, an episode that briefly drove the price down and became one of the more publicized examples of the governance opacity endemic to anonymous memecoin projects.[1] The token nonetheless recovered and remained among the leading memecoins into subsequent market cycles.
Relation to Remilia
$PEPE is not a Remilia Corporation project, but it became a staple asset within the crypto-native Milady and Remilia community: a large portion of community members bought and held it, and it came to feature prominently in their finances during and after the 2023 memecoin wave. Its uptake was a natural fit for the milieu — $PEPE is built on Pepe the Frog, a character central to the imageboard meme lineage from which the New Net Art movement draws, and whose "rare Pepe" collectibles are frequently cited as a precursor to the NFTs that Milady itself belongs to. It remained distinct from the community's own memecoins, including Remilia's later official $CULT (2024).
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Pepe (cryptocurrency)". Wikipedia. Retrieved July 21, 2026.
- ↑ Kraken. "What is Pepe (PEPE)?". Kraken Blog. Retrieved July 21, 2026.