Pepecoin Doubles to $500M Market Cap as Memecoin Fever Steals Bitcoin's ETF Thunder

The price of pepe (PEPE), one of the many memecoins that spawned out of crypto winter, has doubled in a week to a $500 million market cap as traders anticipate the etchings of a bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF-induced bull market.

The frog-themed memecoin was one of the beacons of optimism in the recent bear market, rising to a $1.6 billion market cap in early May as traders speculated over whether it could rival the likes of dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB).

The hype rapidly wore off as the market cap slipped to $244 million earlier this month, but it now appears to have found a way out of the doldrums with a significant uptick in trading volume and on-chain activity.

On Wednesday, a post on pepe's X page revealed that more than 155,000 individual wallets were holding pepe, including all token bridges to Arbitrum and BSC. Trading volume reached $423 million over the past 24 hours, a 22% rise from the previous day, according to CoinMarketCap.

The recent gain can be attributed to a $5.5 million token burn that took place on Tuesday, which alleviated fears of a rogue developer potentially selling tokens on the open market.

Pepe wasn't the only memecoin to experience upside – dogecoin and shiba inu both enjoyed notable rallies Thursday as traders began to trade more speculative assets.

The sector's positive performance comes after bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, surged to a 16-month high of $35,000 alongside growing optimism that a spot ETF will soon win approval in the U.S.