PEPE Fair Launch Challenged as Bubblemaps Shows 30% of Supply Was Bundled

The popular narrative surrounding the Pepe (PEPE) memecoin as a truly decentralized "coin for the people" is being strongly challenged. New analysis from Bubblemaps suggests that nearly a third of PEPE's initial supply was actually controlled by a single concentrated entity right at the token's launch in April 2023.

Source: Bubblemaps

Early Selling Pressure and Price Impact

The investigation found that the same cluster of wallets then executed a large sell-off, dumping $2 million worth of PEPE tokens just one day after launch. This coordinated early selling introduced heavy downward pressure and, according to Bubblemaps, prevented the token from reaching a $12 billion market cap milestone.

PEPE/USD, one-year chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Adding to the controversy, PEPE's price fell 5.7% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading over 81% down from its all-time high. Separately, the project's website was exploited in December, temporarily redirecting users to a malicious wallet-draining phishing tool.

Forensic Tool Uncovers Insider Activity

These findings were made possible by Bubblemaps' Time Travel feature — a forensic analytics tool that reconstructs a token's historical distribution to spot early insider activity. Identifying tokens where a large proportion of supply is concentrated in a few wallets is a crucial red flag for potential rug pulls and memecoin scams.

Source: Bubblemaps