Can PEPE bounce back as DOGE dominates the $5B memecoin surge?

Key Takeaways

PEPE’s holder count hit a record 472,158 despite an 18% weekly drop. DOGE’s stronger whale concentration and broader adoption position it technically and fundamentally better.

Speculative appetite is heating up again.

Memecoins are up nearly 4% in the last 24 hours, with inflows topping $5 billion in just two days. This pushed the total memecoin market cap to $65 billion, reviving risk-on sentiment.

Dogecoin [DOGE] led the charge, tagging the $0.20 handle after a 3.51% bounce. It’s a notable recovery after two weeks of distribution, where DOGE shed 30% from the $0.27 local top.

Meanwhile, Pepe [PEPE] has posted a more modest 1.61% gain off of the $0.0000104 base.

However, its PEPE/BTC chart still suggested weakness. The pair bounced off the 0.0000000000852 BTC support zone but continued to underperform relative to DOGE and other majors.

Source: TradingView (PEPE/BTC)

Rotation risk creeps in

In other words, as Bitcoin [BTC] pulls risk-off capital, traders are rotating into higher beta plays like memecoins to chase short-term alpha. 

The DOGE/BTC pair rose 1.72% to start the week. Six of the top 10 daily gainers were meme tokens.

It’s clear the speculative bid is back.

That said, PEPE hasn’t caught the same tailwind. Despite the PEPE/BTC pair bouncing off a key support, it’s still missing from the top gainer list. Could this be a lagging move, or are flows starting to rotate out?

PEPE adoption holds steady as price dips

PEPE dropped 18% this week, making it the worst performer among the top three. And yet, its holder count has hit an all-time high at 472,158.

Sure, it’s still way behind DOGE, which has 8.3 million holders.

However, zooming into on-chain data, notable divergences emerge. 

According to Etherscan metrics, the top 100 PEPE wallets control 72.74% of the total supply, indicating a higher concentration. By comparison, DOGE’s top 100 holders account for 63.79% of its circulating supply.

Source: EtherScan

On the flip side, PEPE’s top 10 holders account for 39% of the total supply, whereas DOGE’s control 44%. In summary, PEPE is more concentrated overall in the top 100, but a bit less stacked at the very top.

Source: CoinCarp

And this stronger concentration among DOGE’s largest wallets seems to be paying off. DOGE ended July with a 30% gain, whereas PEPE posted a 12.8% rally. 

In summary, despite the memecoin’s ramping on-chain activity, it’s still trailing DOGE on both technical setups and fundamentals. That puts DOGE in a stronger position to close August higher.