Benzinga - The return of famous retail trader "Roaring Kitty" on social media galvanized the memecoin market, with frog-themed token Pepe (CRYPTO: PEPE) becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries.
What Happened: PEPE soared 15.40% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro, breaking out of the rangebound price action that persisted over the week.
The rally saw the meme token surpass Uniswap (CRYPTO: UNI) and stablecoin First Digital USD (CRYPTO: FDUSD) in market capitalization, breaking into the top 25 coins by market cap list. The coin was also the seventh-most traded coin in the last 24 hours, with volumes hitting nearly $2 billion.
The rally triggered profit-taking opportunities for many traders. An early investor transferred a massive stash of 250 billion PEPE tokens, worth $2.4 million at prevailing prices, into cryptocurrency exchange Binance on Monday, according to Lookonchain. His PEPE portfolio returned nearly $3.6 million in profit.
An early buyer of $PEPE deposited 250B $PEPE($2.67M) into #Binance for profits 55 mins ago.He bought 474.95B $PEPE($4.8M) with a cost of only $1K.
His profit on $PEPE is ~$3.6M.https://t.co/w2J655MLUw pic.twitter.com/4PBKdiGVdo
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 13, 2024
Why It Matters: The frenzy was fueled by the social media comeback of Keith Gill, popularly known as "Roaring Kitty," a retail trader famous for his role in the GameStop short squeeze of 2021.
PEPE' social volume rose significantly in the last 24 hours, according to on-chain analytics firm Santiment. The platform identified PEPE as one of several coins to keep an eye on, with substantial volatility likely in the coming days.