A hunch, a gut feeling, a premonition – call it whatever you want, but it worked out pretty nice, as my face ended up in the same article with Vitalik Buterin on Cointelegraph. Luck had a lot to do with that accomplishment, but it made me scratch my head and wonder if I can do it again.
Can I walk into the same river twice and get the same results, just like those totally-not-suspicious-at-all-super-early Pepe investors? Logic would suggest that is not likely, but this world is not driven by logic, so let’s see where we land!
Who’s In The Biz of Herding Frogs?
When I visited Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, I couldn’t take two steps without seeing PEPE.
It was a complete takeover, a quirky trend, perhaps even a statement from I don’t know who. It felt like a bad dream where I had an unfortunate privilege to visit 4chan’s lair, but in the flesh. I thought Pepe was a flavor of the month, and it would slowly descend into obscurity, but it seems like this hype train is powered by some sort of rocket fuel.
To be honest, it is downright scary to think about how all this hype could be manufactured so quickly and how it got monetized.
The article I mentioned in the intro was called ‘How Smart People Invest In Dumb Memecoins: 3-Point Plan For Success’ and it talked in detail about how to jump on the bandwagon without getting rekt the very next second. It is a fine read, but ultimately, the plan for froggy success doesn’t require a 3-point plan at all.
Because the best and only guaranteed way to profit from ‘dumb memecoins’ is to actually manufacture them.
Not that I would know something about that, of course, I know no more about that than a frog knows about bedsheets. But what I know is that someone has been profiting handsomely from the craze, buying loads of crypto frogs just before they would spring into action.
Coincidence? Nope. 1000x memecoin profit? Yep. Like taking candy from a baby.
Never Tell Me The Odds Of That Happening Again
They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.
Then someone else chimes in and says ‘aaakshually, lightning is more likely to strike the same place again’ and we all witness how two armchair meteorologists engage in a mass debate.
But as fun as that sounds, I think it is way more engaging to wonder about the fair chances of someone buying trillions of the memecoin on UniSwap for $263, then 3 weeks later seeing that investment turn into about $9 million. ‘The trader’ has been gradually taking profits by sending smaller amounts multiple times a day to UniSwap, and receiving ETH in exchange.
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Then, the internet investigators started adding two and two together.
According to @Louround_ from Twitter there are a bunch of related wallets that hold a token value superior to all the on-chain available liquidity. Meaning, if the mastermind behind the amphibian revolution chooses to jump away into the pond, those holding the token would be drowning in their own sour tears.
Another nice graph shows you exactly how Pepe hops from one wallet to another, and all the other ‘money moves’ made by some smooth operators. Does those transfers look like the work of amateur to you? It’s an elaborate scheme, and we only see the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
You’d think the perpetrators would have enough butter on their bread after the first rodeo, and would quietly ride away into the sunset. No. They did it again with PEPE 2.0 to make a ‘measly’ 375x profit… and who would even try to stop them from creating Pepe The Third?
Some People Would Still Smooch The Frog
In my humble opinion, nobody in the world has Lady Luck working overtime for them.
Just looking at the activity on these wallets I can say that the person, or the people behind them know exactly what they’re doing, and it is in no way a ‘shot in the dark’. There are strong reasons to believe that we are seeing an insider, who’s loading up the bags on all the Pepe clones, or even their creator, who’s playing a much bigger game.
It is challenging to track the actual person behind this wallet, but one thing is for sure, he or she is as lucky as your local politicians who buy the land just before it is rezoned.
People love to scout and track these addresses, but ‘just watching’ is kinda dangerous too. A lot of the time insiders create these honeypot addresses to trick people into ‘copying their moves’ for quick gains. The ‘masterminds’ then sell off by taking profits at the expense of new liquidity, dip the trainwreck, rinse and repeat. Easy as!
Some point out that there is no liquidity at all for Pepe 2.0 so it’s impossible to cash out with real money, so whoever is pulling the strings is just pumping up the number until it has actual liquidity, like the original Pepe. The deeper you dive, the more questions you have…
There’s a phrase in the venture business about having to “kiss a lot of frogs to find a princess”, meaning that you have to look at a lot of projects to find some real gems. But if it looks like a frog, quacks like a frog and jumps like a frog, we’re probably dealing with a Pepe insider, and I wouldn’t recommend you to kiss them in any way, shape, or form.
The last piece of wisdom I’d like to drop today is this… if frogs had side pockets, they’d probably carry handguns. Be careful about stocking up on memecoins, it’s all fun until the person behind the game takes their ball and goes home.