PEPE, Bitcoin, and the common thread between them

• Short-term investors and BTC whales have gotten increasingly involved in PEPE.
• A look at PEPE and Bitcoin revealed an interesting relationship between these cryptocurrencies.

Pepe [PEPE] was one of the most sought-after meme coins at the beginning of the year. As its popularity grew, so did its number of addresses, which sat at around 137, 000 at press time. In contrast, only 10,300 addresses held Bitcoin at the time of writing.

Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2023-2024

BTC whales play the meme coin game

It wasn’t just short-term addresses that were holding PEPE, as many Bitcoin [BTC] whales were also observed to be showing interest in the meme coin. According to Nansen, out of all the addresses holding PEPE and BTC, 1.27% of the addresses held both coins.

A total of nine addresses held more than 50,000 BTC.

137k addresses hold $PEPE compared to 10.3k for $BITCOIN, but only 1.27% of addresses hold both coins

Who are these 1.87k memecoin traders, and are there any interesting addresses to dive into?

Let’s take a look using Token Overlap… pic.twitter.com/xQJFOG0X1C

— Nansen (@nansen_ai) August 16, 2023

An address named hgvmax.eth emerged as the foremost holder of both Pepe and Bitcoin. The combined value of hgvmax.eth’s Pepe and Bitcoin assets surpassed $650,000 at the time of writing. However, their most substantial holding was in Unibot, where their ownership extended to over $800,000.

On the contrary, the top Bitcoin address that was also involved with PEPE belonged to the entity known as Token Millionaire. This address made the first of its numerous purchases on 15 May, amassing Bitcoin worth $3.5 million.

Remarkably, the address’s affinity for Pepe was manifested in a smaller sum of $12,000.

Not just limited to PEPE

An even more remarkable participant known as the Elite DEX trader began investing in mid-May, when they procured a substantial 18.3 million tokens. Gradually increasing their holdings, they recuperated most of their initial investment, achieving an average token cost of $0.0036, according to Zerion.

Comparable to Token Millionaire, this trader also owned a modest quantity of Pepe, albeit only a small remnant due to the profitable sale of their primary stack.

This Elite DEX Trader exhibited heightened activity in meme coin trading, boasting an eclectic mix of tokens in their portfolio. Beyond Bitcoin and Pepe, their engagement extended to various other cryptocurrencies, shaping a diverse investment strategy.

Correlation between BTC and meme coins

According to Nansen’s data, many of the other top Bitcoin holders have previously owned or currently own Pepe, including four of the top 10 holders of Bitcoin. This interesting relationship between BTC and meme coins may provide context as to what the future holds for these cryptocurrencies.

Over the last three months, PEPE has showcased the most correlation with BTC’s price in the month of July. After this, Shiba Inu [SHIB] and Dogecoin [DOGE] showcased similar price movements to BTC in the earlier parts of August.

At the time of writing, however, there wasn’t a massive correlation observed between any of the meme coins and BTC, as the king coin has only showcased sideways movement during this period.

Source: Santiment

On the social front

Activity on the social front will play a crucial role in determining the success of these meme coins in the future. For PEPE, the number of social mentions and social engagements surged by 52.65% and 53.4% respectively.

For DOGE, the uptick was 20.6% in terms of mentions and 1.1% in terms of engagements. Shiba Inu observed the highest spike in the meme coin sector and observed a rise of 119% in terms of mentions and 74.5% in terms of engagements over the last week.

Source: LunarCrush

Realistic or not, here’s PEPE’s market cap in BTC’s terms

In terms of overall sentiment, it was observed that all of these meme coins had seen a massive uptick in weighted sentiment. This implied that the positive outlook for these tokens outweighed the negative ones at press time.

Source: Santiment

However, the emergence of tokens like BALD could put these meme coins at risk and affect their ongoing dominance.