thecryptobasic.com
An early Pepe holder has flipped his $26 investment in the token to a staggering $60.3 million but is unable to cash out on gains.
Pepe quickly gained traction among the crypto community following its launch in April 2023. Its unique narrative, which mimics Pepe the Frog, and memes garnered interest and spurred an impressive price uptick.
While most early investors have cashed out their gains, an early PEPE whale is currently on a mind-blowing 232,068,400% return but remains keen on holding the asset. The holder turned his initial $26 to $60.3 million but has not sold to realize his gains yet.
Here’s The Catch
On-chain data shows that the whale wallet spent 0.013 ETH ($26) to acquire 2.52 trillion PEPE on April 14, 2023, a few hours after the Ethereum-based meme coin launched. Seen then as a mere amount, his return on investment (ROI) has exploded since then.
Meanwhile, the PEPE whale may never be able to cash out on his gains as the meme coin developers blacklisted his address. Controversially, Pepe’s contract has an embedded feature that allows its core developer to blacklist wallets holding the token through the onlyOwner modifier.
Notably, several speculations on the blacklist reason have made the rounds. However, popular consensus believes the wallet owner is a PEPE developer and was blocked to prevent him from steering selling pressure through its sale.
The wallet’s address holds almost 0.6% of PEPE’s total supply, and selling its shares could be detrimental to the asset’s price. Meanwhile, this is speculative, and the true intentions of the blacklist remain unconfirmed.
While this whale is unable to sell his share, other early Pepe buyers have become millionaires after cashing out, as their meager investments rolled over by multiple folds. For instance, a PEPE whale cashed out $1.97 million in July, growing his initial $200,000 investment by a staggering 886%.
Pepe Surges to New ATH
Meanwhile, Pepe has achieved a notable milestone today. The meme coin surged to an unprecedented $0.00002524 peak early Thursday, attaining a new all-time high.
Notably, the uptick came following a report that California-based crypto exchange Robinhood has added support for the third-largest meme coin by market cap.
At press time, PEPE trades at $0.00002322, up 84% in the past 24 hours. The frog-themed token occupies the 14th slot in the crypto market cap ranking, with a valuation of $9.77 billion.