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Coinbase (COIN) drew attention to the surge of Bitcoin-based meme coins, including pepecoin (PEPE), in its latest newsletter released on Wednesday.

After a significant drop in cryptocurrency prices, traders are resorting to more speculative strategies such as memes and jokes in order to earn profits. As a result of this trend, there has been a notable increase in gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain, reaching unprecedented levels.

Coinbase's latest newsletter revealed a remarkable surge in trading volume for meme coins, which reached an astonishing $2.3 billion last week. This represents a significant increase of more than six times compared to the previous week and marks the highest level observed since May 2021.

The newsletter highlights the ongoing craze for meme coins, with the meteoric rise of PEPE leading the charge. PEPE has witnessed an astounding surge of nearly 55,000% since its launch in mid-April, propelling its market capitalization to a staggering $1.8 billion in just under three weeks. This makes it one of the most rapidly growing tokens ever witnessed in the cryptocurrency market.

Read more: Pepecoin Sees Massive Accumulation by Crypto Whales Amid Trading Volume Surge on Binance

The introduction of the Bitcoin Request for Comment (BRC-20) token standard enabled developers to issue tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain, leading to the growth of Bitcoin-based meme coins that were also tracked.

Nevertheless, the majority of these tokens ultimately proved to be meme coins and collectively achieved a market capitalization of $1.8 billion earlier this week.

Pepe meme's use by political groups

Nonetheless, the newsletter managed to provoke certain members of the Crypto Twitter community by highlighting that the Pepe the Frog meme, which serves as the symbol for pepecoin, has been utilized in racist manners on the internet.

“The token is based on the Pepe the Frog meme, which first surfaced on the internet nearly 20 years ago as a comic-strip character,” the Coinbase newsletter said. “Over time it has been co-opted as a hate symbol by alt-right groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League.”

Despite the fact that the newsletter includes a disclaimer that separates the author from the content and states that it "not necessarily reflect the views of Coinbase or its employees," the sentence became the focal point of discussion on Crypto Twitter.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, while the Pepe the Frog meme has been widespread on contentious online forums such as 4chan and 8chan, both of which are linked to alt-right politics, "the majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted," as stated on the ADL website.

 

 

Pepe community fumes

“$pepe is not a hate symbol!,” tweeted one @Pauly0x, a prominent PEPE supporter.

“I will be closing my personal and business accounts with @Coinbase and moving them to @Gemini. #PEPE IS NOT A SYMBOL OF HATE,” tweeted @OG_Kenobi_Hello, another PEPE supporter.

“The $pepe movement is about love, equity, & a protest against VC-backed entities/influencers that have been criminally taking advantage of the web3 community for the past 2 years,” @OG_Kenobi_Hello further added.

The term “#deletecoinbase” was trending on Twitter during Asian morning hours on Thursday.

Source Coindesk