Here’s where PEPE’s records has driven the market with CEXes now in charge

• No other ERC-20 token logged faster growth than PEPE.
• The majority of the meme trading has now switched to centralized exchanges. 

Pepe’s [PEPE] unprecedented rise has made it more appealing for investors to look in the direction of memes, a 20 May Messari report revealed. 

How much are 1,10,100 PEPEs worth today?

The platform mentioned that after the first two weeks of emergence when it seemed like the broader market overlooked the token, participants’ eyes opened to the possibility of replication in other memes.

Tales of early @pepecoineth buyers getting rich off small initial investments have made it more attractive for the marginal user to speculate on other newly launched meme coins.

After $PEPE's first two weeks, we began to see material interest in other meme coins. pic.twitter.com/8eTQuvdnRD

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) May 19, 2023

Now familiar with the game

However, there were reasons for this change in sentiment. According to the crypto market intelligence provider, PEPE became the fastest-growing ERC-20 token in the existence of the market.

 This was not just limited to the quick run to a $1 billion market capitalization. Instead, holders’ growth took only 22 days to surpass the 100,000 milestone. Pepe took a much shorter period than Shiba Inu [SHIB] to reproduce such a feat. 

Thus, it was clear that participants in the market got wind of the PEPE potential earlier than any other meme despite initial skepticism.

Source: Messari

Meanwhile, that was not the only ground that created the shift in perception.

Messari, in the same report, noted that the familiarity of participants in the crypto market since Dogecoin’s [DOGE] and SHIB’s rise in 2021 also played in the quick holder addition. 

And as this propelled PEPE’s popularity, it also led to a growth in market cap per holder similar to SHIB. The same interest drove Ethereum’s [ETH] gas fees to new highs in 2023. 

Letting retail have its way

ETH was PEPE’s underlying asset. And therefore, this created higher volatility, and increased demand for the cryptocurrency. Typically, increased demand for ETH leads to congestion, and most times— an unavoidable hike in gas fees.

This was the case since early adopters traded the meme on Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes) pending PEPE’s listing on Centralized Exchanges (CEXes).

Source: Messari

But since MEXC led the way to listing, and Binance also got passed the baton, most PEPE trading now occurred on CEXes.

Is your portfolio green? Check the Pepe Profit Calculator

Needless to say, this pushed up PEPE’s adoption since 8 May. And consequently, its adoption was fueled by off-chain market making, retail participation, and notably, derivatives trading. In addition, Messari did not fail to mention that,

“PEPE derivative volumes have already surpassed daily spot trading volumes.”

Following PEPE’s appearance, a number of memes have been emerging on other networks. The most surprising out of the lot was Bitcoin [BTC], whose BRC-20 standard allowed for the minting of fungible meme tokens.

Source: Messari