Millions of dollars worth of pepe tokens are held by just a few wallets, with one such wallet seemingly a memecoin bull.
The largest pepe coin (PEPE) holder is sitting on more than $1 million worth of the token even as concentration risks loom over the short-term future of the trending memecoin.
Analysts have raised concerns about the behavior of investors who bought relatively large amounts of pepe after its issuance on Ethereum, turning about $1,200 of initial capital to over $9 million in just a few days.
The frenzy surrounding the frog-themed token last week sent market capitalization of a few thousand dollars to over $150 million and created massive hype, attracting liquidity from traders and spurring scores of look-alike tokens on other blockchains.
Exit liquidity remains a concern. Data shows trading pools for pepe coin on decentralized exchange Uniswap hold less than $4 million in available liquidity as of Tuesday, so a sudden sale by a top holder is likely to immediately dunk prices.
Trading volumes for pepe on centralized crypto exchanges have ballooned to an average of $300 million daily, but market liquidity remains relatively thin – which may, again, cause a steep drop in prices should a large holder liquidate their holdings.
The wallet holding the largest amount of pepe is sitting on over $1.1 million worth of the tokens after acquiring them for a few hundred dollars worth of ether. The same wallet also owns $1.1 million in shiba inu (SHIB) and $1 million in floki (FLOKI), suggesting the owner is an active memecoin trader. The investor holds $43,000 worth of ether.
While this wallet holds the largest amount of pepe in a single place, other top holders may have spread their holdings across several wallets.
Data from Lookonchain shows five wallets connected to ‘pepecexwallet.eth,’ which received funds from the Pepe deployer contract, cumulatively purchased over 8.87 trillion PEPE after issuance for just $385, selling the stash days later for over $1.23 million.
These sales were mainly made through Uniswap, and a smaller amount was sold on crypto exchange Huobi.
Crypto analysts on Twitte said last week that almost 3% of pepe holdings are connected to each other, citing data from wallet analysis tool Bubblemaps, accounting for $3.78 million worth of the tokens.
As of writing time on Tuesday, crypto exchanges MEXC Global and Huobi are the largest commercial pepe holders, with over 5.5% of the supply held.
This article was originally published by CoinDesk.
