Coin columns · Ethereum City (Capital)
Pepe: an Ethereum meme coin born from an internet frog
A token driven by community and attention, not utility
PEPE is a meme coin that appeared on Ethereum in April 2023, named after the internet meme Pepe the Frog. It openly describes itself as having no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return.
1. What it is
An anonymous team launched PEPE in April 2023 as an ERC-20 token, Ethereum’s standard format. Its name and image come from a frog drawn by US cartoonist Matt Furie in his 2005 comic ‘Boy’s Club’, but the website says the token is unconnected to Furie and is purely for entertainment.
Trading exploded, and within a month PEPE was listed on major exchanges such as Binance, becoming a symbol of the 2023 meme-coin frenzy. Bridged versions exist on other chains, but the original contract is on Ethereum. On the Crypto Nation map, PEPE stands in Ethereum City (the capital), as it was first issued on Ethereum.
2. Token design
Total supply is 420.69 trillion, mixing the internet-joke numbers 420 and 69. The team said there were no transaction taxes, the liquidity-pool (LP) tokens were burned and contract ownership was renounced, so no one can change the rules. It also stressed that there was no presale or investor allocation, often called a ‘fair launch’.
93.1% of supply went into a Uniswap liquidity pool and 6.9% into a multisignature wallet, needing several signers, for future listings, bridges and liquidity. With no staking or governance, demand and attention set its price almost entirely. The simple contract cannot gain new features.
3. Key events
In August 2023, after the team’s multisig settings were changed, about 16 trillion PEPE moved to several exchanges. Remaining members said a few former team members had taken the tokens, highlighting the risks of anonymous teams. Since then PEPE has been driven more by its community than by any team.
Some far-right groups adopted the original character around 2016, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) added certain variants to its hate-symbol database. Furie even drew Pepe’s funeral in a 2017 comic, then campaigned to reclaim the character, a story told in the 2020 documentary ‘Feels Good Man’. The token borrows a meme with that complicated history.
4. Things to know
With no real utility or revenue, PEPE’s price swings widely with public attention and market mood. A few large wallets hold big amounts, so a single sale can move the market. The team is anonymous, making accountability difficult if problems arise.
Fake tokens and impersonating accounts with similar names are common, so contract addresses should be checked through official channels. Copyright questions about the character and regulators’ warnings about meme coins are also worth knowing. Meme coins are generally seen as a mix of internet culture and speculation.
Written from information public up to October 2026. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.