Frenzied trading activity has pushed the newly-launched pepe token (PEPE) to garner trading volumes higher than those of dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) – which are otherwise the biggest memecoins by trading volumes.
Pepe trading volumes surged to over $250 million in the past 24 hours amid a 100% price spike over the weekend in a rally that reversed on Tuesday night. Over the same period, trading volumes on dogecoin stood at $225 million, while shiba inu volumes were a much lesser $100 million.
Data from CoinGecko show crypto exchange OKX saw over $76 million in trading volumes for pepe tokens, followed by $43 million at the decentralized exchange Uniswap.
A bulk of these volumes may be generated by automated bots, which continually buy and sell tokens to generate trading activity and provide liquidity to investors in turn for a few dollars of profits.
As such, a trade of more than $100,000 can cause a 2% dip in pepe prices on OKX, the data shows. In comparison, the same dip would take a trade of $800,000 for dogecoin on OKX, owing to its higher market capitalization and overall liquidity.
Early pepe buyers are taking profits, meanwhile.
Monday saw one trader take a 40% slippage haircut to exit a pepe position on Uniswap in one go, as some Crypto Twitter traders observed. An analysis of the wallet address showed the trader had turned an ether (ETH) – valued at $1,800 at the time – to over $3 million worth of pepe in just over two weeks.
DEXTools data shows sellers are routinely selling from one ether to over 7 ether worth of the tokens as of Wednesday morning, contributing to selling pressure. However, buying activity remains strong – with 6,500 buys compared to 3,300 sells in the past 24 hours, the data shows.
Meanwhile, analysts have previously raised concerns about the behavior of investors who bought relatively large amounts of pepe after its issuance on the Ethereum blockchain, turning about $1,200 of initial capital into over $9 million in just a few days, as CoinDesk previously reported.
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Pepe is down 18% over the past 24 hours.
