PEPE Leads Meme Coin Losses as Fresh Token Launches Grab Trader’s Attention

The largest meme coins by market capitalization in Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and PepeCoin (PEPE) have been trading in the red since last week amid the rise of new competitors in the sector.

Recent bearish moves from Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) certainly haven’t helped either given their high correlation to the rest of the market.

PEPE topped the losses among the top three meme coins, down 14.9% since last week and 5.5% in the last 24 hours. It’s currently trading at $0.00000144 with a market capitalization of $619 million.

Still, on a 30-day scale, PEPE is up 52.5% after posting impressive triple-digit gains during June’s meme coin rally.

New meme coins taking the spotlight

The launch of copycat projects like PEPE 2.0 and Shib 2.0 captured the market’s attention last week.

PEPE 2.0’s market capitalization soared over $50 million within a few days of its launch, per CoinGecko data.

At the same time, a new meme coin project, Wall Street Memes, created by the team that brought the popular Wall St Bulls NFT collection, has raised over $13 million in less than a week.

The arrival of new competitors in the space likely shifted the trader’s attention away from PEPE. This can be seen in the declining trading volumes for the meme coins, falling below pre-pump levels in June.

The negative price action in BTC and ETH last week amid rate hike expectations by the U.S. Federal Reserve likely added to the selling pressure in meme coins.

BTC briefly lost support at $30,000 on Friday last week, last trading at $30,165.

ETH also slipped below $1,900 as buyers failed to maintain the positive momentum from June, last trading at $1,861.