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Meme coin Pepe (PEPE) is leading the altcoin rally today and is up more than 26% in the past day, according to CoinGecko.
The digital token, which runs on the Ethereum network, is currently trading for $0.00000159. Over the past seven days, it has shot up 45%.
Launched in April, the asset is based on the Internet meme of Pepe the Frog and is extremely volatile. It grabbed the crypto community's attention when one investor turned $250 in PEPE tokens into $1.02 million.
Like all meme coins—cryptocurrencies based on Internet trends—it's unclear how long PEPE will hold investor interest. In August, PEPE had a near miss when insiders sold $16 million worth of PEPE on multiple exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, KuCoin and OKX. The token's market cap sank to $$315 million million at the time. But the team behind the meme coin managed to recover.
At the time of writing, the token has a market cap of $666 million.
PEPE isn't the only meme coin doing well today. Of the top 20 biggest coins and tokens, Shiba Inu (SHIB) is the best-performer, having risen 5% in 24 hours; it's currently priced at $0.00000931.
Meanwhile, its rival Dogecoin (DOGE), the biggest meme coin in existence and former favorite of Tesla CEO and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, is up over 2% in the past day. It's currently trading for $0.08 and last week also experienced a surge.
Meme coins have made a comeback since Bitcoin, the biggest and oldest digital asset, got an astonishing boost. When the biggest virtual coin experiences a rally, it tends to bring everything with it.
Last week, a number of new meme coins were born into existence and rallied following the deaths of legendary investor Charlie Munger and diplomate Henry Kissinger. The MUNGER token shot up 31,000% almost immediately after it started trading.
But although there are hundreds of meme coins trading, such assets tend to disappear as quickly as they start launch.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.