Pepe cryptocurrency developers crash the digital asset by selling $ 15 million worth of tokens

The notorious Pepe meme-coin (PEPE) has demonstrated a sharp drop in price. The reason is that millions of dollars worth of tokens were transferred from the crypto wallet of the coin’s development team. This was reported by Decrypt.

According to the Safe Global service, 16.045 trillion PEPE totaling $ 15.7 million were transferred from the account. This is almost 4% of the total supply of the asset.

The ASXN project analysts noticed what was happening and tracked the funds. Most of the tokens, worth $ 8.2 million, were transferred to OKX, $ 6.5 million to the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, and $ 434,000 to Bybit. Another $ 400,000 was sent to an unknown address.

This is the first outflow of PEPE from the developers' wallet. Interestingly, within an hour after the transactions were completed, the number of signatures required to confirm the transfer on the account was reduced from five to two.

The balance of the meme coin developers' crypto account still contains PEPE tokens totaling more than $ 10 million. However, abnormal activity has affected the project’s market performance.

«While profit-taking in cryptocurrency is normal from the team’s perspective, the suddenness [і] of the unexplained transactions,coupled with the lack of communication, raises some alarm bells,»wrote crypto analyst Miles Deutscher.

The developers of RARE are suspected of using the pump and dump scheme. Probably, another fraudster decided to make money on an «incredible success story» and naive investors. As it became known earlier, PEPE developers can:

• blacklist an unlimited number of addresses;
• change the number of tokens available for trading;
• limit the number of transactions with an asset.

Such functions allow creating conditions for blocking, theft, and large-scale dumping of a digital asset by its creators, which has already taken place. Any fraudulent actions will have a significant impact on the wallets of investors who have invested in a little-known but rapidly growing digital asset.

At the time of writing, the market capitalization of PEPE has fallen to $ 352.4 billion, and daily trading transactions have reached a sky-high 309.28% and amount to $ 332.3 million.