Crypto influencer Borovik. eth has expressed outrage over Coinbase’s email alert on Twitter, which referred to the Pepe meme coin as an “alt-right hate symbol.” Borovik. Eth shared a screenshot of the email and asked why Coinbase was sending out such an email.
Pepe, the mascot of the meme coin, has been co-opted by alt-right groups as a symbol of hate, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The meme token had become the fastest Ethereum token to reach the $1 billion mark last weekend before crashing more than 50% in the following days.
Coinbase’s Blog On Memecoins Frenzy
According to a blog post from Coinbase, meme coins, and Bitcoin NFTs are back in the limelight, with a renewed appetite for crypto spilling over into these low market cap tokens.
Memecoins are enjoying a resurgence in popularity and trading volumes. Last week saw meme coins trading at over $2.3 billion, a surge of more than six times from the previous week and the highest recorded level since May 2021.
Pepe, issued around three weeks ago with a comically huge supply of 420 trillion tokens, has led the meme coin activity. Out of 179 meme coins tracked by CoinGecko, PEPE is the only one other than Dogecoin and Shiba Inu currently in the top 100 cryptocurrencies by overall market cap.
Memecoins have also hit the Bitcoin blockchain, thanks to the creation of a new type of token called BRC-20 tokens. Created in early March, they allow people to create fungible tokens (or other cryptocurrencies) on Bitcoin’s blockchain and have reached a market cap of nearly $1 billion.
To date, more than 11,000 different BRC-20 tokens have been created, and at least one, the original ORDI, has been listed on some centralized exchanges. BRC-20 tokens include a BTC-native PEPE and tokens named MEME and PIZA, as per Coinbase’s blog.
However, the spike in trading activity is causing a key issue for Bitcoin: higher network fees. Bitcoin was built primarily for payments, and alternate use cases are clogging block space, which led transaction costs to jump from around $1.20 last week to $20 at the start of this week. The PEPE frenzy caused similar issues on Ethereum, which saw gas fees roughly double since the token’s launch on April 19.
While some traders have made significant profits through meme coin speculation, it is not without risks, as many meme coins have a history of being “rug pulls” or scam projects.
Despite the risks, the frenzy surrounding meme coins and NFTs shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Observing how regulators and established financial institutions react to this new phenomenon in the crypto world would be intriguing.
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