With the crypto majors stalling after a quick pump last week, and NFT floor prices cratering almost universally, there was space for a new narrative to take hold. Enter Pepe...

The little meme frog that people love to hate.

Last week on Friday, an anonymous developer launched a new token on the Ethereum network called $PEPE. In a matter of days the token had increased in value by up to 20,000%.

With stories rampant on Twitter of people making tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars from sub $100 investments, a whole wave of profit starved crypto natives began not only buying, but also creating new memecoins trying to out-meme each other. $PEPE lit the spark, then came $WOJAK, followed by $TROLL and countless others.

This co-incided with an embaressing hearing for SEC chairman Gary Gensler, leading popular NFT artist @beeple to post the following piece pretty much nailing the top of the $memecoin run.

If Crypto is volatile then memecoins are volatility squared and in most cases are more akin to gambling than investing. With that said, some memecoins have stood the test of time such as $DOGECOIN with a market cap of $11.7 billion and $SHIBA with a market cap of $6.3 Billion. Does $PEPE with a current market cap of about $100 Million have staying power? Only time will tell, but he certainly isn't as cute as the fluffy meme coins that are still with us.