Specifically, on the morning of August 25th, the multisig wallet of the memecoin project Pepe (PEPE) suddenly transferred over 16 trillion PEPE tokens (accounting for 3.8% of the total supply) to 3 cryptocurrency exchanges – OKX, Binance, Bybit – and an unverified wallet address.
Of note, after this substantial token transfer, the project exhibited an unusual behavior with its multisig wallet – reducing the required number of signatures for transactions from 5 out of 8 down to 2 out of 8. Currently, Pepe’s project wallet holds only 10.67 trillion tokens.
Adding to the intrigue, Pepe’s Twitter account has also ceased updating information, with the most recent post dating back 2 weeks. Furthermore, personal information of the Pepe project development team has been exposed publicly.
In response to these perplexing activities, the community expressed concerns about a potential rugpull involving PEPE. However, the Pepecoin development team promptly clarified the recent 16 trillion token transfer to exchanges. They acknowledged the token transfer but revealed that it was the wrongdoing of 3 former project members driven by “unbridled greed” and done without the consensus of the entire team. These individuals have since deleted their social media accounts and contact information to evade accountability.
In addition, to secure and maintain the project, the remaining 10 trillion tokens in the wallet were transferred to a new address.
Ultimately, the project commits that all existing token reserve wallets are secure and apologized to the community for the events that transpired, hoping that everyone will continue to believe in the bright future of the project.
Following the explanation, PEPE experienced a slight recovery. At the time of writing, PEPE is trading around $0.00000088, up from its low point after the coin drama at $0.00000080.
Although the price has shown some recovery, Pepe’s reputation has still been significantly impacted. According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, Pepecoin entered the Top Trending list due to the coin drama. As a result, the price is expected to undergo more fluctuations than usual.