Pepecoin Doubles to $500M Market Cap as Memecoin Fever Steals Bitcoin's ETF Thunder

The price of pepe [PEPE], one of the many memecoins that spawned out of crypto winter, has doubled in a week to a $500 million market cap as traders anticipate the etchings of a bitcoin [BTC] spot ETF-induced bull market.

The frog-themed memecoin was one of the beacons of optimism in the recent bear market, rising to a $1.6 billion market cap in early May as traders speculated over whether it could rival the likes of dogecoin [DOGE] and shiba inu [SHIB].

The hype rapidly wore off as the market cap slipped to $244 million earlier this month, but it now appears to have found a way out of the doldrums with a significant uptick in trading volume and on-chain activity.

On Wednesday, a post on pepe's X page revealed that more than 155,000 individual wallets were holding pepe, including all token bridges to Arbitrum and BSC. Trading volume reached $423 million over the past 24 hours, a 22% rise from the previous day, according to CoinMarketCap.

The recent gain can be attributed to a $5.5 million token burn that took place on Tuesday, which alleviated fears of a rogue developer potentially selling tokens on the open market.

Pepe wasn't the only memecoin to experience upside – dogecoin and shiba inu both enjoyed notable rallies Thursday as traders began to trade more speculative assets.

The sector's positive performance comes after bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, surged to a 16-month high of $35,000 alongside growing optimism that a spot ETF will soon win approval in the U.S.