Pepe, the frog-themed memecoin, witnessed its price plummet by nearly 15% following suspicions of a possible "rug pull" act by its developers.
The alarm bells started ringing when a massive $16 million worth of Pepe tokens was moved from the developers' multisig wallet to a variety of cryptocurrency exchanges on August 24.
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Blockchain custody app Safe Global highlighted that the exact transfer was a whopping 16 trillion Pepe tokens, which constitutes about 3.8% of its overall supply.
The destinations? Three major exchanges and an ambiguous wallet address. Breaking down the transfer specifics, data reveals that OKX received $8.2 million worth of Pepe, Binance got $6.5 million, Bybit took in $434,000, and a cryptic wallet received the remaining $400,000.
However, what truly raised eyebrows was the unexpected alteration made to the developers' multisig wallet soon after this massive transfer.
Current data from Etherscan points to the startling change that now necessitates only two out of the eight signatures for wallet transactions. Previously, it demanded a more secure five out of eight signatures for the same purpose.
The significant reduction in the required number of signatories is indeed cause for concern, especially considering that the wallet still holds a sizeable $10 million worth of Pepe tokens.
It's crucial to note that this recent massive offload marks the first-ever instance of Pepe tokens being transferred from the project's multisig wallet to exchanges.
Not long ago, many memecoin aficionados pegged Pepe as the upcoming star in the meme-based crypto universe.
Optimistic projections even went so far as to claim that, given the right bullish wave, Pepe could potentially outpace and "flip" Dogecoin, the original memecoin giant.
However, the latest fund movements paired with the multisig wallet changes might cause some of these investors to revisit and possibly revise their bullish outlook.
