Former Team Members Stole $15 Million Worth of Pepe Tokens, Can PEPE Make a Comeback?

Last week, former PEPE team members were accused of using multi-sig to steal 16 trillion PEPE. Affected by this, PEPE fell by about 20% within a day, and PEPE investors began to panic.

16 Trillion PEPE Stolen

The PEPE team announced that a series of unexpected transactions took place from the $PEPE multisig CEX Wallet in which ~16 Trillion $PEPE tokens (worth roughly $15m USD) were transferred to various crypto exchanges (OKX, Binance, Kucoin, and Bybit) and the required signer count was reduced to 2/8 wallets. The multi-sig now sits with 10 Trillion Tokens and one signer remaining, and PEPE can assure you that those tokens as well as this twitter account are in safe hands.

According to the announcement, the multi-sig addresses involved in this incident:
0x5BdEA820293689B77FA8e83b1E3D58B27B5ce9BA

On August 25th, this address transferred out 16 trillion PEPE. Then the PEPE team transferred the remaining 10.6 trillion PEPE to the new address (0X9f5e) on August 26.

According to PEPE, there have been internal disputes since its establishment, and some members of the team have become bad actors due to ego and greed. The three former team members were selling tokens behind their backs without their knowledge, causing the price of PEPE to plummet. Currently, the price of PEPE is $0.000000862787, down 21.4% in 7 days.

What is PEPE?

Pepe coin (PEPE) is a memeable memecoin inspired by the iconic Pepe the frog, featuring a community-focused design, simple tokenology, and an anonymous creator. It was launched on April 14, 2023. In less than a month, the number of token holder exceeded 100,000, and it reached a market cap of more than $1 billion.

PEPE is one of the best performing meme coins in 2023 in a generally bearish market, with its market cap surging to a peak of $1.8 billion in mid-May, and its trading volume surpassing that of DOGE and SHIB.

With a total PEPE supply of 420,690,000,000,000 PEPE, 93.1% of these tokens are sent to liquidity pools, while 6.9% are held in a multi-sig wallet for future exchange listings, bridges, and liquidity pools.

How to explore the PEPE contract ?

PEPE’s contract is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, and the contract address is as follows: 0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933.

Through the Tokenview Ethereum block explorer https://eth.tokenview.io, query the PEPE token contract, the results show that the contract was created on April 14, 2023, and the number of transactions currently exceeds 450,000.

Contract Name：PepeToken

Transactions：453,983

Rank：1155389

Token Tracker：Pepe (TOKEN)

Creator：0xfbfeaf0da0f2fde5c66df570133ae35f3eb58c9a

Created in: 0x2afae7763487e60b893cb57803694810e6d3d136186a6de6719921afd7ca304a

Created Time：04–14–2023

Click on the transaction 0x2afa that created the contract, and found that this is the deployment of tokens and initial liquidity at block height 17046105.

Included in Block：17046105

Time：04–14–2023 22:51:35 (Local)

From：0xfbfeaf0da0f2fde5c66df570133ae35f3eb58c9a

To：Pepe（0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933）

X-ray：This shows the transfer details of the initial liquidity.

Token Txns (ERC-20)：420,690,000,000,000 PEPE

Click on the Pepe (TOKEN) to view further details about the token. The current number of holders exceeds 189,000, and the number of transactions reached 10,600 on August 25, a new high in nearly a month.
The top three addresses currently holding PEPE tokens are Binance (23.78%), Okex (5.22%) and Binance (3.40%).

Contract：0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933

Total Supply：420,689,899,999,994 PEPE

Holders：189,194

Transfers：1178636

Closing thoughts

The PEPE team’s “guarding and stealing” has undoubtedly shaken investors’ confidence in PEPE. The discussion about whether the price of PEPE can recover is also continuing to ferment on social media.

As a representative of the new generation of meme coins, PEPE’s internal disputes show that not all meme coins that have received much attention can be as successful as Doge. Investors must remain sensible at all times, after all, the current crypto market environment is different from the past. The success of most meme projects is inseparable from the professionalism and organization of the team and community operation.