PEPE quietly surged 100% earlier this week, raising questions about whether the frog-themed memecoin will become a serious Dogecoin competitor.
A few months ago, Pepecoin came and went, bringing unimaginable quick riches to early investors and turning newcomers into reluctant bag holders.
While the chart resembles the standard crypto pump and dump scheme, Pepecoin (PEPE) price action this week suggests that the frog-themed token could be Dogecoin’s newest competitor (DOGE) in the memecoin sector.
Dogecoin has dominated the memecoin space for years. Many dog-themed token impersonators, such as Shiba Inu (shib) and Floki (FLOKI), have challenged DOGE’s position over the years, but eventually faded away.
SHIB briefly surpassed DOGE in market capitalization after rising 1000% to a peak valuation of $41.1 billion on Oct. 28, 2021. At the time, Dogecoin’s market capitalization was $31.5 billion.
However, the near-vertical rally faded in the following weeks and Dogecoin regained its top spot in the memecoin category.
Dogecoin currently ranks ninth in the cryptocurrency space by market capitalization, with Shiba Inu trading at less than half Dogecoin’s valuation.
A new entrant in this segment was launched on April 15. A frog-themed ERC-20 token on Ethereum, Pepecoin, has broken into the top 100 coins by market capitalization.
PEPE jumps in to steal the show
PEPE also led sector gains in the latest crypto rally amid a flurry of Bitcoin exchange-traded fund fills in the United States.
The token’s gains were accentuated by hints released by the US-based Gemini exchange of a possible PEPE coin listing.
Feeling pepish about something coming soon… pic.twitter.com/PEwsTOVT22
— Gemini (@Gemini) June 22, 2023
The 100% rise recorded by PEPE from $0.000000833 on June 20 to $0.00000167 in less than a week could be driven by hopes around future listings on US exchanges such as Coinbase.
While PEPE is enjoying bullish momentum, let’s look at its performance against DOGE over the past two months.
Will Pepecoin outperform Dogecoin?
Pepecoin rose to fame in May 2023, leading the memecoin buzz on Ethereum. Although there have been previous attempts at frog-themed tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), this version became especially popular in a very short amount of time.
Pepecoin peaked at 13.8% of Dogecoin’s market capitalization on May 6; however, since then it has followed a downward trend.
The token gained momentum with the latest Bitcoin bull run (BTC) above $30,000, leading the market gains with a 100% increase from a valuation of $393 million on June 20 to $786 million on June 23.
The token’s market share in terms of Dogecoin’s market capitalization increased from 6% to 7% on June 23.
In terms of trading volumes, PEPE led DOGE during the memecoin hype on Ethereum. At its peak, PEPE reached highs of over $1.5 billion, around four times as much as DOGE.
However, Pepecoin’s trading volume dried up after memecoin hype cooled, falling below Dogecoin. The potential listing on US-based exchanges could likely improve Pepecoin trading volumes in the coming months.
Google keyword search trend for Dogecoin and Pepecoin shows that interest in Pepecoin almost reached the level of Dogecoin in the first week of May.
However, the search volume for “Pepecoin” on Google has since declined, with “Dogecoin” maintaining an average seven to eight times higher than PEPE.
Pepecoin also enjoys certain advantages over Dogecoin, including that it resides natively on Ethereum, which means it can see future integrations with the Pepecoin ecosystem. decentralized finance and NFTs from Ethereum.
Furthermore, Pepecoin has a fixed supply of 420.69 billion while Dogecoin uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism and has a fixed annual issuance of 5 billion coins.
However, based on its market cap and popularity on Google, Pepecoin still has a long way to go before it becomes a mainstream memecoin like Dogecoin.
On top of that, Dogecoin enjoys first-mover advantage and dominance of the network effort, having been around for over eight years, while Pepecoin is only a couple of months old.
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