Whales take profits on pepe’s surge, market cap drops nearly $200 million: Nansen

Pepe the memecoin has been all the rage in recent days after the price skyrocketed more than 250% in the last week.

At the same time, pepe's market capitalization surged to $582 million on Tuesday before whipsawing to $397 million on Wednesday. Beyond the froth, however, there’s another story of limited liquidity and whales dumping the coin, according to Xin Yi, a research analyst at Nansen.

“There are a lot of large holders who got in early and the token price has gone up a lot since then so when they take profits it tends to move the price and market capitalization significantly as people tend to follow the movement of these 'whales,’” she told The Block. “[But] liquidity is rather thin given the market capitalization.”

Yi points to one “whale” selling $2.2 million of Pepe but only receiving $650,000 worth of ETH “due to massive slippage.” In the last 24 hours, several other whales have also sold off more than $1 million a piece, she also said.

Pepe meme coin's market capitalization during last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.