Fri Fire: Gold & Oil Up, Bitcoin & Crypto Dive
Tesla’s Secret Weapon? It’s Not What You Think. 
Certain traders have recently sold NFTs part of the Bored Ape Yacht Collection (BAYC) at a discount to invest in the now-trending memecoin – PEPE.
The asset has been among the best performers in the crypto market lately, as its price has surged by over 600% over the last two weeks before cooling off in the past 24 hours.
Shifting From NFTs to PEPE
The popular Twitter user Cirrus revealed recently that some traders had sold 14 BAYC NFTs below their floor price during the weekend. They used the 672 ETH (worth over $1.2 million at the time) acquired from the deals to purchase PEPE.
The crypto community was somewhat divided on that move, with some arguing that dealing with the memecoin at the moment could turn quite profitable. Others believe the hype around the token has reached such a high level that an upcoming crash seems inevitable.
Cirrus has previously claimed that people are likely to part with their digital art below floor prices to enter PEPE’s ecosystem.
As CryptoPotatoreported last week, crypto whales have also shifted their attention toward the memecoin. One such holder swapped $590,000 worth of WBTC, $90,000 worth of CULT, $235,000 worth of UNI, and $37,000 worth of ETH (almost all their assets in this wallet) to get 1.72T PEPE.
PEPE has turned into a real sensation in the world of crypto, boosting its market capitalization from less than a million dollars in mid-April (the launch date) to over $1.7 billion (according to CoinMarketCap) on May 5. It is worth mentioning that even celebrities joined the overall mania. One example is the American rapper DeAndre Cortez Way (better known as Soulja Boy), who said he “done got rich off PEPE.”
Has PEPE Started Losing Steam?
Despite the massive PEPE craze and the almost daily price spikes, the asset has been on a downtrend for the past 24 hours. The decline comes a few days after Binance – the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – listed the coin in its Innovation Zone.
We are yet to see whether PEPE will mimic the performance of well-known memecoins, such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, which have attracted a substantial number of investors in the past few years. During its peak in 2021, DOGE skyrocketed to nearly $0.75 and reached a market cap of almost $90 billion. It is currently among the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies.
Nonetheless, investors should keep in mind that the PEPE mania could be a temporary event, meaning that becoming rich overnight might not be the case (as most would wish).
