Shiba Inu Positions Swapped into Pepe (PEPE), David Gokhshtein Highlights Mysterious Shift

David Gokhshtein, the founder of Gokhshtein Media, has highlighted a mysterious shift in the meme coin economy. He noted that Shiba Inu positions are currently being swapped for Pepe (PEPE), the latest meme coin sensation based on the infamous Pepe the Frog meme.

This is as Pepe (PEPE) sees a surge in trading volume, nearly tripling that of Shiba Inu (SHIB). According to CoinGecko data, Pepe’s 24-hour trading volume is $357,108,704 compared to Shiba Inu’s $125,955,225.

Looking at the data, people have been swapping their $SHIB positions into $PEPE.

Don’t @ me — just look at the chain.

— David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) May 2, 2023

According to Nansen, 3,350 wallets hold both SHIB and PEPE. Nansen reports on a specific large holder, “Wintermute 0x2800,” who first received 1.2 billion SHIB on Feb. 23 with a balance of 15.2 billion. The same whale also first received 46.5 billion PEPE on April 20 and has a balance of 81.6 billion.

PEPE was not intended by its creators to be a serious offering and, therefore, it has no specific use case. It bears mentioning that SHIB continues to gain new utility, for instance in payments, and boasts of several developments in metaverse, gaming and the like.

It seems the shift by traders to PEPE might be borne out of negative emotions, most likely FOMO (fear of missing out). Gokhshtein pointed this out as he responded to a Twitter user who observed several meme coins bleeding to PEPE, saying, “Too many emotional people.”

Gokhshtein added, “I still like SHIB long-term.”

On April 18, 2023, the PEPE coin debuted with a price of $0.000000064982. At its current price of $0.00000120, PEPE has rallied thousands of percent since its inception. However, there is no guarantee that PEPE coin’s price will continue to increase.

On one hand, PEPE’s official website claims that it should not be considered an investment opportunity and that it was merely designed as a meme coin with humor in mind.