Pepe (PEPE) is one of the top meme coins right now, and I think this is easily going to go to zero at pretty much any time. Buying this coin, to me, would be pure insanity and in complete disregard of all the obvious facts. So I want to show you why, under no circumstances, would I buy Pepe. Look at the chart right now. You've already missed it.
I remember seeing Pepe when it was cheap, practically free, and then it does these huge pumps and goes off. There's no reason I see to buy at this point. You've already missed it.
Read what PEPE's own website says
This is a meme coin, so pay attention to the website. Look what the official website says: "Pepe is a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return. There is no formal team or roadmap. The coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only." That's on the official roadmap.
There's absolutely no reason to buy this. To me, it is pure insanity to be buying this. Why would you buy this? To me, investing is about getting into something with an expectation of profit. And I see no expectation of profit from this point. I see purely manipulation that it even got this high.
It has nearly the same market cap as the best tech in crypto
But right now, this has a market cap of almost what Internet Computer does. Internet Computer is, in my opinion, the absolute best technology in all of crypto. Fully on-chain computation. You can put a website like jerrybanfield.com on Internet Computer Protocol. You've got chain fusion, the best interoperability anywhere, Bitcoin layer to Ethereum layer, which eliminates the need for oracles. It has the largest research and development team in blockchain. And this has about the same market cap as Pepe.
So to me, almost the only place you're going to go from here is down. Anyone who cares about actually making money, and is not looking to lose money, I don't see why anyone at this point would buy Pepe, unless you just accept that you want to be broke and lose your money. This is my opinion and my own experience, not financial advice. If you want to follow how I think about coins like this over time, I keep that whole conversation going in my Money playlist.
Why exchanges love meme coins
Buying this is profitable for exchanges to trade. Exchanges love meme coins because they get paid to list the token. They get paid when you trade it. And that's why so many people hype these things up, because there's money to be made by convincing you to buy stuff like this. But for you, in almost every case, it's going to purely just be a bad idea that ends up losing your money. There's no way I would ever want to have money in Pepe.
The ERC-20 gas fee trap
And yes, it does have a good amount of holders, but this is an ERC-20 token. So when ETH gas fees go high, you won't even be able to withdraw a small amount of this from an exchange. If you have a small amount of this, like $20 or $30, you might not even be able to transact this at all on Ethereum because of gas fees. I can't believe we're still launching tokens and using tokens on Ethereum in 2024. This is outrageous.
The pattern: hype, manipulated pump, and the long way down
So when Pepe first came out, there was tons of hype and speculation on it. And then it just trended downwards for quite a long time. And then, to me, came another manipulated pump. Somebody got paid, perhaps several people got paid, a bunch of money changed hands to market this and promote this and hype this up. And then you get this collective insanity of a bunch of people buying into it. Even though the price pumps significantly here and there, and this does have a lot more actual senders than many other coins of similar market caps, you're inevitably looking at this: it's down, down, down, down.
Because there are more and more meme coins, the higher your meme coin gets, the more competition, the less relevant it becomes, and the fewer people are going to get excited about it. So to me, if you look at things like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, after they had their big pumps, they've been a waste of your time and your money since then. If you missed the initial big pump, it's been too late.
If you look at Dogecoin, it really went nuts in 2021, and it's been almost a total waste of your time and money ever since then. In the last year it did go up in price a bit, but you see the gains often come right back down. You could have held Bitcoin and gotten the same level of gains. So one thing that does not age well are meme coins. You get these manipulated Shiba Inu pumps, and then the value just dumps out of it. Another manipulated Shiba Inu pump, and the value just dumps again.
So under no circumstances would I touch Pepe, because you've got to consider your time and attention as well. I've gone through this same exercise with other meme coins, like in my honest reality check for SPX6900 holders and my realistic Toshi price prediction of zero.
You need to think long term, and this is gambling
Somebody on stream said the tech will go longer. You need to think long term in crypto. And here's the thing: if you want to gamble, then call it gambling. As someone who has had a gambling addiction and has been years without placing a bet, meme coins in the past were attractive to me, because my mind says this isn't gambling, it's investing. I think that's interesting. But stop lying to yourself. This is gambling, and the odds are stacked against you.
If meme coins are attractive at all, it's when they're at a much smaller market cap, before the manipulated pump has come in. After that, you've missed it. And almost all of the smaller market cap meme coins are just total flops that go nowhere. I went all the way down that road myself, which I talked about in why trading meme coins was horrible for me even on ICP.
So to me, the only smart thing to do, the thing that's efficient in using your time and energy, is to invest in the best technology, the biggest research and development team. Take your 15% APR on Internet Computer Protocol, and just wait and be patient. If you're impatient, go out there and help somebody else by working a job. And if you need instant gratification, the casino is probably going to be more fun than buying Pepe and sitting by yourself at home with an ERC-20 token. At the casino you can at least go and gamble with the other sad people who are gambling there with you, and maybe have a little bit of fun.
Why I didn't buy, and why profiting off it felt disgusting
So to me, Pepe is on the road to zero, and I only reviewed this because you all asked me to. I saw Pepe when it was way lower. You can argue, well, Jerry, you missed the big pump on Pepe. And yes, I did. I chose not to buy it back before it had these two big pumps. I was well aware of Pepe way back, and I said this was garbage back then. Why?
Because, one, you only get a pump like this through manipulation, where exchanges participate in manipulating prices, or insiders buy a whole bunch just to get the price up so they can start dumping it. And two, you only get any kind of sustained manipulation because people are tricked into buying this, and it just grosses me out. I don't see any virtue in stealing money from people who are essentially gambling.
If I had even bought it back then and held it and then dumped it up here, I've done that before, and I feel disgusting. Back in 2022, I bought a crypto for $300 and sold it for $15,000. I felt disgusting. I'm like, ew. I just profited off of other people's lack of research and manipulative, lying marketing, and I felt disgusting doing it. That's why meme coins, to me, are something better to stay away from. All the opportunity is in the tiny meme coins, if you can figure out which ones are going to get these manipulated pumps. At least, if you're going to gamble, make sure the odds are in your favor. With big meme coins, the odds are against you. The time has passed. Move along.
If you want me to look at a specific coin and give you this same kind of honest, real-time research, that's exactly the sort of thing I do with the people closest to me. You can get direct access, ask me your own questions, and join the weekly group calls by being part of the Jerry Banfield Family.