From emoticons to a market value of 7 billion US dollars, how can Pepe steal the jobs of copycats?

Author: Day, Vernacular Blockchain

In recent years, the Meme track in the crypto industry has emerged as a new force. With the intentional or unintentional promotion of more and more celebrities such as Musk, Meme has become one of the mainstream tracks and popular narratives in crypto. Many crypto KOLs represented by Vitalik Buterin have changed from not supporting it at the beginning to easing their attitudes now and do not deny its value.

Recently, the market value of the popular Meme "spicy chicken" Pepe has reached more than 4 billion US dollars, and the highest has exceeded 7 billion US dollars. It has performed well in this round of Meme. To this day, many people are still confused about Pepe. Today, let's discuss how Pepe has come to where he is today step by step...

01 Pepe's Meme Culture

Looking at the development of Memecoin, most of them use materials with certain historical origins or certain popularity on the Internet as carriers, and Pepe is no exception. Its name comes from the character Pepe the Frog created by American cartoonist Matt Furie, which first appeared in his work Boy’s Club. The comic began serialization on MySpace in 2005 and ended in 2010, gaining some attention on the Internet. There are four characters, and Pepe the Frog is one of them. He has won love with his cute image and funny expression. If you play more on the chain, you will also see three other Memecoins related to the names (Brett, Andy, Wolf) on various chains, most of which have been hyped for a period of time.

Pepe's path to fame is similar to that of many Internet hits: it first became popular on the subculture forum 4chan and other niche groups, then attracted the attention of social network opinion leaders (KOLs) and exploded. In 2008, it became popular on cultural forums such as Myspace, Gaia Online and 4chan, and in 2015 it became one of the most popular Internet hits on the social platform Tumblr.

On social networks, the cost of re-creation and dissemination is relatively low, and Pepe emoticons and Internet memes that can cover all emotions can spread quickly and resonate among a large number of netizens. It was originally a character that expressed happiness, but with the secondary creation and reinterpretation of Internet users, it gradually evolved into a symbol of sadness and depression. This transformation is related to the popularity of self-deprecation and self-mockery in Internet culture.

People found resonance in Pepe's sad image and used it as a way to express their inner feelings, especially for self-deprecation and expressing difficulties and frustrations in life. This emoticon package has been widely used and has become one of the important symbols in Internet culture. The sad frog is also very popular in Chinese Internet culture. It has been selected as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Sadness" and has become an important symbol for expressing negative emotions and bitter moods.

The evolution of Pepe's image on the Internet is a rather complex and multifaceted phenomenon.

The sad frog was associated with racial rhetoric and the US presidential election in 2015 and was used to spread extreme information. Some Trump supporters use Pepe as their symbol and associate it with anti-political correctness and anti-establishment sentiments. This has led to Pepe being misunderstood as a symbol representing the "Alt-right" and racial hatred.

This misunderstanding has further exacerbated the negative impression of Pepe's image. In order to prevent the sad frog from being further smeared, Matt Furie, the father, chose to end it all and kill Pepe.

In fact, even if the sad frog is "dead", it still cannot stop its continued popularity among netizens. As a widely used emoticon package, everyone can freely use it to express their inner emotions, including sadness or frustration.

02 Pepe Token

Thanks to the rapid rise in the popularity of Pepe Frog and the extensive exposure in the media, Pepe Token (PEPE) was born in April 2023, and it quickly became one of the objects of investment for many virtual currency enthusiasts. In just one month, PEPE's market value exceeded US$400 million, entering the top 100 cryptocurrency market capitalizations.

PEPE was originally created to rebel against the complex Token economic model of the "Puppy Series" Memecoin. It hopes to return to the entertainment spirit of Memecoin, so it avoids complex operations such as pre-sale, destruction and taxation in its Token economics.PEPE's goal is to surpass other Memecoins and become a leader in the Memecoin field.

In addition, PEPE also borrowed the campaign slogan of former US President Trump, "Make America Great Again", and adapted it to "Make Memecoins Great Again".

PEPE's market operation has adopted some strategies to attract the attention of the cryptocurrency community, including the formulation of tax exemption policies, a redistribution system that rewards long-term holders, and a deflation mechanism to maintain the scarcity of tokens. PEPE is closely related to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) culture and attempts to transform this development into a narrative driving force for token growth.

At present, the development of PEPE has exceeded the expectations of the team. After the adjustment of BN, it began to rise again. The recent market value has exceeded US$7 billion in the short term, and has recently fallen back. The recent wave of rise should also have a certain relationship with Trump's cryptocurrency remarks. Through the above understanding, we can see that the development of Pepe is also related to Trump.  

03 Why can pepe rise

Before PEPE came out, there were many local dogs, but only the current Pepe has reached the current height. Let's briefly sort out how PEPE has come to where it is today:

PEPE attracted the attention of some big players and teams in the early stage of its launch.These big players discovered the incubation period of PEPE by analyzing the flow of funds on DEX and began to build positions. In addition, some early buyers also hold NFTs related to PEPE, which may be related to the initial team. In addition, the PEPE team blacklisted the addresses that purchased PEPE at extremely low prices and obtained huge profits in the early stage, and then gave up the contract rights.

On Twitter, the discussion of PEPE suddenly increased on April 17, and some small and medium-sized key opinion leaders (KOLs) began to discuss and promote PEPE,which caused heated discussions on social media. At the same time, Google search volume also began to rise from the end of April, indicating that PEPE began to attract wider attention.

Soon after the launch of PEPE Token, it was quickly listed on several CEX/DEX, including Gate, OKEx, Matcha and BN. These listing processes were accompanied by the rise of Token prices. After the launch of BN, some users took profits, and the team cashed out and left the market and the team was unevenly distributed, which led to a sharp drop in PEPE. After a six-month correction, with the intensification of anti-VC rhetoric, the popularity of the Meme track soared again, and PEPE also broke through a new high and had a tendency to become the new leader of Meme.

Simply summarize the reasons:

Team: The team has super capabilities and a top marketing team. In the early stage, it cooperated with some influential KOLs for publicity and listing resources.

Spread of the story of getting rich: The story of the early PEPE holders getting rich spread in social media and the cryptocurrency community. These stories involve situations where PEPE holders have made huge gains in a short period of time, which has aroused the interest and curiosity of others.

FOMO sentiment: After experiencing the crazy rise of Memecoins such as Dogecoin and SHIB coin, people have been looking for the next potential skyrocketing Token.The emergence and rapid growth of PEPE has triggered people's fear of missing out, fearing that they will miss the opportunity of similar 100x and 1,000x Memecoins again.This fear of missing out has led to more and more people buying PEPE, forming a self-reinforcing cycle.PEPE attracted more than 100,000 coin holding addresses in less than a month after its release.

CEX/DEX promotion: Trading platforms have played an important role in the development of PEPE.PEPE was quickly launched on some well-known platforms such as MEXC, BN, OKX and HTX in a short period of time. Perhaps seeing that PEPE reached 100,000 coin holding addresses in a short period of time, this popularity attracted the attention of trading platforms, causing more users and funds to flow into PEPE.

The above is what I know about why PEPE can rise. It can be seen that the current gameplay of some Memecoins is similar to it. If you have different opinions, please leave a message to supplement.

04 Summary

Twitter KOL neso summarized the decisive factors of Meme at each stage of growth, including the following figure: