The price of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency $PEPE has surged by nearly 70% over the past week, with its dramatic ascent seemingly having been fueled by cryptocurrency whales “heavily engaging” with the cryptocurrency as it rises.
According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, the cryptocurrency saw a 61% pump in just 48 hours at a time in which it started seeing the “most $100,000+ whale transactions” and volume on its network over the last six weeks.
The cryptocurrency’s price rise has seen it outperform rival meme tokens Dogecoin ($DOGE) and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) amid a wider crypto market recovery. Cryptocurrency prices started rising after financial giants submitted applications for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
These institutions include the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, and $1.5 trillion asset manager Invesco and $85 billion asset manager WisdomTree. Moreover, Germany’s largest banking institution Deutsche Bank has reportedly submitted an application for a digital asset custody license to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), the nation’s financial watchdog.
PEPE’s price rise has seen the cryptocurrency’s market capitalization surpass the $500 million mark, making it the 64th largest cryptocurrency yby that metric, ahead of Bitcoin SV ($BSV) and behind Neo ($NEO).
PEPE, as CryptoGlobe reported, is a hot meme coin inspired by the infamous meme and cartoon character Pepe the Frog, and was introduced to the market on April 17, 2023. Despite warnings about the contract owner’s potential ability to modify transaction taxes and blacklist functions, PEPE’s market has seen a remarkable boom. It is now a top 100 digital asset after multiple centralized exchange listings.
Earlier, a fortunate cryptocurrency investor has seemingly managed to turn an investment of just 0.125 ETH in PEPE into a staggering $1.14 million in just a matter of days by buying into it at the right time.
Featured image via Unsplash.
