Cryptocurrencies hold the potential to significantly transform global financial systems — either through reconfiguring the mechanisms of transaction or serving as a new store of value.
Even with all of the institutional adoption and increasing mainstream appeal seen over the last couple of years, it’s important to note that these factors are still nascent — and that the primary drivers in this new space are still speculative investments.
While instances of savvy traders turning pennies into generational wealth have become a rarer sight as the industry matures, they do still happen. As of late, most such trades have been in the domain of meme coins — with risky, short-term gambits.
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However, playing the long game can still pay off in a big way — provided that one knows what they are doing. Back in mid-April of 2023, one trader bought 4.91 trillion Pepe (PEPE) — exchanging a variety of other coins and tokens worth a grand total of $3,000 at the time for his stake in the meme coin.
At press time, PEPE was trading at $0.00002513, up a staggering 8,276% from the $0.00000030 it was trading at when the trader acquired it. December 2023.
Although meme coins like PEPE are not renowned for their stability, this trader has managed to steadily cash out on his initial bet — locking in millions of dollars worth of profit, with millions more yet to be realized. Here is how they did it.
Long-term PEPE bet pays off
On April 25, 2023, the trader exchanged 20,000 Liquidity Incentive Tokens (LIT) worth $2,256 at the time for 3,407,945,165,404, PEPE. Less than half an hour later, they sold 0.1 Ethereum (ETH), worth $210 at the time, for an additional 457,332,932,276 PEPE. Another fifteen minutes later, 500 USD Coins (USDC) worth $499 were exchanged for 1,048,914,082,342 PEPE.
In total, $2,965 was spent to acquire the roughly 4.91 trillion units of PEPE, according to data retrieved by Finbold from Etherscan. Since then, the trader has consistently been selling off his stake — having sold roughly 3.03 trillion PEPE in exchange for $27.5 million in profit.
Now, on December 9, an additional 100 billion PEPE were sold — worth approximately $2.8 million at the time. This has brought the trader’s realized gains up to roughly $30.3 million.
The address in question still holds 1.88 trillion PEPE — bringing the worth of the remaining stake to approximately $47,414,400. If it were to somehow be liquidated all at once at these prices, it would bring the trader’s total profit up to $77.7 million.
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