Pepe [PEPE] hits ATH, surpasses Dogecoin’s volume; Is $1bln market cap on the horizon?

• PEPE printed a new ATH, leaving Dogecoin’s trading volume trailing.
• Although profit-taking was set in motion, whale activity could impact the market cap rise.

The trading volume of Pepe [PEPE], the frog-inspired meme cryptocurrency, increased by 220%, outpacing that of Dogecoin [DOGE] in the last 24 hours. According to Santiment, PEPE’s volume exceeded $714 million while DOGE could only account for a little over $251 million.

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This meant that the number of transactions where participants used PEPE was much more than that of DOGE. Invariably, the cryptocurrency also reached an All-Time High (ATH) amid growing interest and bullish sentiment.

Source: Santiment

Soaring in the swamps

At the time of writing, PEPE gained over 80% while exchanging hands at $0.0000021. The token, which emerged on the Arbitrum [ARB] network gained traction among crypto enthusiasts since its price spurred a 2900% increase over the few weeks since its release. 

Although the growth of the cryptocurrency hasn’t been linear, there has been speculation that its market capitalization could hit $1 billion soon. One reason for this perception was the way several whales considered the token worthy of an investment. 

In fact, this group, who were early buyers, formed part of the reason why the meme crossed Shiba Inu’s [SHIB] trading volume at one point. And when there were corrections, whales bought the dip in a bid to accelerate the growth. 

Besides PEPE, many other memes have popped up. But none seems to have the hype like this token, which has gotten a number of exchange listings. And according to Lookonchain, a particular whale exchanged almost all their assets for PEPE.

A close examination of the whale portfolio showed that the amount of PEPE held by the address was worth about $3.4 million. This was far above second-placed Ethereum [ETH] in the portfolio, whose total worth was just $4,240. 

We noticed a whale exchanged almost all assets for $PEPE.

The whale exchanged 20.62 $WBTC($590K), 17B $CULT($90K), 44,194 $UNI($235K) and 19.96 $ETH($37K) for 1.72T $PEPE ($2.19M currently).

The buying price of $PEPE is ~$0.0000005533 and made a profit of ~$1.23M. pic.twitter.com/O6BOQMd1EW

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 4, 2023

Traders are alive as the journey could be set

At press time, PEPE’s market cap was $868.41 million. The metric is derived from the multiplication of the circulating supply and the price of an asset. Therefore, the increase implied that PEPE’s circulation evidently remained visible.

It is noteworthy to also mention that most of the volume came from Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes), majorly Uniswap [UNI]. Activities concerning the token on centralized exchanges were extremely low. And even though the number of buyers outshone sellers, the latter’s volume was closing in on the former.

Read Pepe’s [PEPE] Price Prediction 2023-2024

According to DEX Screener, the buy volume was $65.7 million while the sell volume was $60.3 million in the last 24 hours. A situation like this means that investors were actively involved in profit-taking since the ATH.

Source: Santiment

PEPE’s price action has been marred with extreme volatility as shown above. However, the current selling pressure might not be confirmation of a decline in market capitalization. With an increasing number of exchange listings, coupled with subsequent buying, it could only be a matter of time before it hits the $1 billion mark.