According to statistics from Coinmarketcap, the current total market value of cryptocurrencies is 1.17 trillion US dollars, while the total market value of the meme sector has reached more than 18 billion US dollars, accounting for 1.5%. The total market value of the meme coin sector has even surpassed ADA, The market value of public chains such as SOL, TRX, LTC, and MATIC.

Compared with other sectors in the encryption market, the Memecoin sector obviously has a strong effect of relying on the rich. For example, Shib has increased by 500,000 times, and doge has increased by 400 times. These myths of creating wealth have also added a lot of new traffic to the encryption market .

Moreover, the wealth creation myth of Memecoin continues, such as Unisat in BRC-20 this year, and PEPE this year.

After the last round of bull-bear cycle, Doge and Shib, the top meme coins, have not only survived, but also have a market value of TOP 15, and their price performance has even surpassed many so-called value investment projects. Why do these projects with no use value However, it surpasses many Layer 1 and Layer 2 public chains with fairly good ecological development?

Lets start with Meme culture.

1. Meme Culture and Meme Coin

What are memes?

Meme (translated into Chinese as meme, meme) refers to a cultural element widely disseminated on the Internet, usually expressed in pictures, videos, animations, text or other forms, which is what we often call memes. .

The concept of the word meme originated in 1976. At that time, science writer Richard Dawkins described and defined memes in his work The Selfish Gene, trying to explain the way cultural information spreads. The role of transmission in biological evolution.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a meme is defined as: “a basic unit of culture transmitted by non-genetic means, especially imitation.”

Today, the word Meme has been widely circulated mainly for two reasons: First, Meme is often humorous, ironic, exaggerated or resonant, and they can spread quickly through social media, online forums, instant messaging and other channels;

Second, because of the popularity of the Internet and social media, people can easily create, share and disseminate content, information dissemination is becoming more and more convenient, and the cost of dissemination is getting lower and lower.

In general, Meme is a popular form of cultural expression on the Internet that is widely popular for its humor, irony, and relatability.

What is MemeCoin?

MemeCoin is a cryptocurrency based on internet memes. Typically created by developers or enthusiasts, they are inspired by popular memes or internet culture and spread widely through channels such as social media and online forums.

Unlike other crypto assets, MemeCoins may be created for the purpose of comedy and entertainment. These Memecoins have no specific purpose and practical application scenarios, but only accidentally provide investment opportunities about consensus while stimulating peoples sense of humor.

As a result, some MemeCoins have gained a large number of followers and even appreciated in value, making them viable investment options for those willing to take risks. For example, the rise of meme coins such as Shib and PEPE has been astonishing. The wealth-making myths of these meme coins are widely spread on the Internet. spread. Today, Meme culture has become part of Crypto.

Among the many meme coins, in addition to the old Doge and Shib, the explosion of pepe this year is very worthy of attention. Pepe jumped nearly 7000% within 17 days after its launch on April 16. The increase is very exaggerated, and the super high increase also attracts More users entered the market.

2. What is PEPE

PEPE is a Memecoin developed by an anonymous team based on the meme Pepe the Frog, inspired by the iconic frog Pepe.

According to the pepe official website, Pepe is here to make meme coins great again. The token has no pre-sale, zero tax, LP has been destroyed and the contract has been abandoned.

3. The origin of pepe

The origins of meme coins can be traced back to Dogecoin (DOGE) in late 2013 and peaked during the 2021 bull market.

In 2021, DOGE currency gained mainstream popularity, growing from a market value of US$700 million on January 1 to a market value of US$88 billion in early May. In 4 months, the market value increased more than 100 times.

In the wake of Dogecoin’s run, Shiba Inu. (SHIB) reached a market cap of $42 billion at the end of October, after starting the year with a market cap of less than $1 million. These dog-themed assets have no intrinsic value, but they are relevant to virality. connections to internet memes, driving their popularity among cryptocurrency users and retail users.

Currently, the market value of DOGE is around US$11.2 billion. Of course, the skyrocketing rise of DOGE tokens has a lot to do with the world’s richest man, Musk. He has mentioned his love for DOGE many times on Twitter, and recently also Change the positioning of your Twitter account to XD (X is Twitter’s new logo, D is Doge). The promotion of such an influential world-class technology influencer has a great relationship with the development of DOGE.

The popularity of pepe coins stems from the character Pepe the Frog created by Matt Furie in the 2005 cartoon Boys Club.

After the original Pepe painting and later variations achieved virality on internet platforms such as 4chan and Tumblr in the 2010s, Pepe was embraced by the cryptocurrency community and quickly became part of crypto cultural lore.

The anonymous team that launched PEPE leveraged Pepe the Frogs existing popularity on Twitter and created a meme campaign to drive early adoption, a strategy that has been surprisingly successful.

The PEPE token was launched on April 14 this year. By May 5, the number of token holders addresses reached 100,000. It only took 22 days. This rapid growth is unprecedented in the history of cryptocurrency. Unseen.

In addition, the market value of PEPE reached a market value of more than 1 billion US dollars in just 23 days after the token was launched. In less than a month, the increase reached 120,000 times, and the price went from 10 zeros before the decimal point when it went online. , rose to 5 zeros, which attracted great attention from the market.

4. PEPE Token

According to the official website, the total number of PEPE tokens is 420, 690, 000, 000, 000 (420 trillion), of which 93.1% of PEPE tokens are sent to the liquidity pool, and the remaining 6.9% of the tokens are stored in In a multi-signature wallet, it is only used for future centralized exchange listing, bridging and liquidity pool.

At present, PEPE has no token economic utility. Of course, this is also a characteristic of many MEME tokens. In the future, pepe tokens may also be given some usage scenarios. After all, new narratives are needed to support the follow-up.

5. Development stage

According to PEPE official website (https://www.pepe.vip/) published roadmap, its future planning is mainly divided into three steps.

The first step was to list it on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap as a meme coin, with 1,000 holding addresses and being mentioned by more people on Twitter.

The second step is for Vibe and HODL to maintain community partnership through Pepe Times communication, provide holders with a dedicated discord channel, and go online on the centralized exchange, with 10,000 holding addresses.

The third step is to develop the token economy and create Pepe-themed products. Customers can use PEPE tokens to purchase them, and part of the income will be destroyed. It will be launched on PEPE Academy and Pepe Tools, as well as on first-tier centralized exchanges, with 100,000 holding addresses. At the same time, it proposes gimmicks that will surpass Bitcoin.

The first and second steps have already been realized, and the development speed of PEPE has far exceeded the teams expectations. After the token was released on April 14, the growth rate was slower on the first and second days. On the third day, The number of addresses held by PEPE reached more than 2,700, and the number of addresses held by PEPE reached more than 16,000 on the fifth day. By May 5, the number of addresses held by PEPE exceeded 100,000, from 0 to 10 10,000 in just over 20 days.

We can feel the growth rate of PEPE by comparing Shib.

When SHIB entered a period of super-high growth in 2021, it took 90 days for the token to reach 100,000 holder addresses. In comparison, the development speed of PEPE is much faster.

Observing the development laws of other meme coins, we can find that in the early days, meme coins generally used cultural narratives and speculation to detonate the market and build consensus. When the consensus demand for meme narrative reaches saturation, it is necessary to pursue substantive functional exploration to expand users and support market value.

In other words, the first stage is the financial flywheel that runs first, and then the second stage is the narrative landing.

For example, after doge achieved great success, it began to explore payment and reward scenarios to realize functional value. After the same Shib achieved success, it also began to announce the launch of ecology such as shibaswap, nft, etc.

Based on the same logic, PEPE will continue to explore new application scenarios in the later stage to support its market value.

6. Driving force

What is the force behind the skyrocketing PEPE coin?

Of course, there are many influencing factors. The skyrocketing PEPE is the result of the combined effects of many factors. It is difficult for us to generalize an accurate model for detailed explanation. In order to facilitate understanding, let’s try to interpret it from only three angles .

1、FOMO

People have been looking for the next MEME coin after seeing the huge wealth effect brought about by Dogecoin and SHIBs crazy skyrocketing.

The emergence of PEPE and its rapid growth have aroused peoples FOMO sentiment, and they are afraid of missing good opportunities such as 100 times coins and 1000 times MEME coins again. Therefore, the faster the growth in the early stage, the more people buy. A self-reinforcing process. It took PEPE less than a month from issuance to token holding addresses exceeding 100,000.

Moreover, PEPE, like other MEME coins, has a very high total amount of tokens, and there are more 0 digits after the decimal point in the secondary market price. From the perspective of personal perception, we buy mainstream coins with $100, whether it is BTC Or ETH, etc., are far from enough to buy 1, which does not constitute any impact on personal feelings, and will discourage small funds.

Just imagine, would we take $100 to buy Bitcoin? Whether it is from the perspective of growth expectations or personal perception, the motivation to buy is not great. After all, the price of Bitcoin is already so high. Even if it rises 10 times, $100 will become nothing more than $1,000.

But the MEME currency is different. Its increase is tens of thousands of times at every turn. If $100 increases 1000 times, it will be $100,000. Moreover, the number of tokens that can be purchased with $100 is huge.

According to the current price, the purchase of 100 million PEPE tokens only costs more than 100 US dollars. 1 billion can be purchased with 1000 US dollars, and the number of purchases by users is in the hundreds of millions. Strong, catering to the psychological needs of investors, whether it is the expectation of future growth or the perception of the purchase quantity, the purchase of meme tokens such as PEPE is incomparable to the purchase of other mainstream currencies.

Moreover, $100 is an amount that most people can afford to lose. Even if the PEPE tokens eventually return to zero, they will lose more than $100 at most. This is very common in the highly volatile crypto market. It is a loss that everyone can bear by default, but in case of skyrocketing, its increase may be very astonishing. This asymmetry between benefits and risks prompts a large number of people to buy. PEPE, like other MEME coins, is suitable for games that use small amounts to make big gains.

2. Promoted by top exchanges

In addition to mobilizing peoples FOMO sentiment, exchanges also played a considerable role in the development of PEPE.

For example, it took only 6 days for the PEPE token to be listed on the MEXC exchange, which is also the first centralized exchange it has been listed on. From the issuance of tokens, it took 22 days to go online on Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange. This is a treatment that many other mainstream tokens do not have. After all, there is still a certain threshold for going online on Binance.

Of course, for an exchange, it is necessary to earn transaction fees. Which token is the most popular, it will choose which token to go online. Said that with such a high popularity, exchanges will certainly not miss the opportunity, and exchanges will rush to go online. In addition to Binance, exchanges such as OKX Exchange and Huobi have also been launched.

The launch of these top exchanges not only lowers the threshold for users to speculate, but also brings more users and funds to PEPE tokens based on the user volume of exchanges such as Binance.

3. The spread of rich stories

In addition, the rich stories of users in the early stage also continue to attract more users to enter the market. After all, the huge increase in PEPE has indeed made a group of early users rich, and these stories of getting rich will become the impetus for more users to join force.

7. Future potential

In the Memecoin sector, Pepe ranks third in market capitalization, after Dogecoin and Shib.

Let’s make a comparison of the TOP 3 coins in the Meme sector:

Dogecoin market value: $10.3 billion, ranking 7th in the entire crypto market.

Shib currency market value: 6 billion US dollars, in the entire encryption market, the market value ranks 14th.

PEPE currency market value: 500 million US dollars, in the entire encryption market, the market value ranks 75th.

At present, the market value of PEPE is only one-twelfth of SHIB and one-twentieth of Dogecoin.

Lets compare the number of addresses holding Shib and PEPE tokens:

According to the statistics of the dune platform, the current number of addresses holding SHIB tokens is 1.4 million+, while the number of addresses holding PEPE tokens is 130,000+. The difference between the two is almost 10 times. The number of addresses holding PEPE tokens Number, not to mention DOGE.

Lets look at the comparison of social media data:

SHIBs Twitter account has 3.72 million followers, DOGEs Twitter account has 3.84 million followers, and PEPEs Twitter account has 430,000 followers, a difference of more than 9 times.

Besides, it is still a bear market. Once the big bull market comes, the increase of MEME currency will be very exaggerated, and of course it will also benefit PEPE.

Therefore, compared with these top meme coins, PEPE still has a lot of room for development. After all, compared with DOGE and SHIB, PEPE was only issued in April this year, and it has only been a few months. To achieve such a result is already quite good.

Of course, as for the future market value of PEPE, whether it can surpass SHIB, DOGE and other Meme coins, everything is unknown. It also depends on the future layout of PEPE. HorairballoonCN will continue to pay attention to the development of MEME coins such as PEPE.

Follow hot air balloon @HorairballoonCN on Twitter to explore more industry news:https://twitter.com/HotairballoonCN