Blockchain data casts doubt on meme coin Pepe’s ‘for the people’ launch narrative, with new analysis suggesting nearly a third of the initial supply was held by a single entity, contributing to the intense initial selling pressure.
Blockchain data visualization platform Bubble Maps claimed in a post on X on Wednesday that approximately 30% of PEPE token supply was bundled at launch in April 2023, adding that investors were “deceived”.
According to Bubble Map, the same wallet cluster sold $2 million worth of PEPE tokens the day after the launch, adding significant selling pressure and preventing the token from passing the $12 billion milestone.
Genesis’ concentrated supply stands in contrast to Pepe’s original branding of “coins for the people.” According to the project’s website, the token was launched in “stealth” with no pre-sale allocation.
sauce: bubble map
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PEPE price has fallen 5.7% in the past 24 hours and has fallen more than 81% in the past year, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Cointelegraph was unable to reach PEPE’s team for comment.
PEPE/USD, 1 year chart. Source: CoinMarketCap.com
Adding to investor concerns, Pepe’s website was exploited in early December to temporarily redirect users to a malicious inferno drainer, a fraud tool used in phishing attacks, wallet drainers, and social engineering scams.
Despite the downsides of PEPE, some crypto traders have managed to make millions of dollars with meme coins.
In March, a trader turned his initial investment of $2,000 into $43 million by holding PEPE. The trader withstood PEPE’s 74% drop from its all-time high before selling, realizing a $10 million profit on his position.
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Forensic tools target launches with high insider involvement
The latest discovery was revealed through Bubblemaps’ Time Travel feature. The feature is a forensic-grade analysis tool released in May that allows Web3 users to reconstruct the distribution history of their tokens, with the goal of detecting insider activity early on, as well as coordinated accumulation efforts to prevent rug pulls and memecoin scams.
Finding tokens where the majority of the supply is concentrated in a small number of wallets can help investors spot scams such as rug pulls. This is where insiders strip liquidity or initiate massive short sales, causing the price to plummet and leaving investors with worthless tokens.
Bubblemap played a key role in uncovering suspicious wallet activity related to multiple meme coins, including the Melania Token and a series of fake meme coins themed around Eric Trump.
One of the most damaging rug pulls of the year, the Wolf of Wall Street-inspired WOLF token crashed 99% within hours, wiping out around $42 million in market capitalization on March 16th.
sauce: bubble map
This token was created by Hayden Davis, co-creator of the official Melania meme (MELANIA) and the Libra token.
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