Here’s Why The PEPE Price Has Been Struggling Over The Weekend

The price of PEPE fell drastically on Saturday to reverse some of its gains earlier in the week. Specifically, this price decline saw PEPE fall to $0.00001088, representing a 7.5% decline in 24 hours. While PEPE’s price problems are part of the broader market downturn, recent whale movement seems to have exacerbated the situation.

Specifically, a crypto whale recently dumped a massive amount of PEPE tokens for ETH. On-chain data shows a single wallet swapped over 1.4 trillion PEPE tokens for ETH, contributing to downward pressure on price.

Anticipation Building For ETH Spot ETF Approvals

According to on-chain data from TheDataNerd, a notable PEPE whale, known by the address “0x837,” made a strategic shift by converting over $18 million from PEPE to Ethereum over the weekend. Such a large exit is a clear bearish signal for PEPE. These Ethereum holdings were subsequently staked into the Compound protocol, suggesting a long-term investment. 

On-chain data shows that the whale recently deposited 300 billion PEPE, worth about $3.85 million, into crypto exchange Binance. With this deposit, the whale incurred an estimated $1.73 million loss. Interestingly, this wasn’t a one-off deposit.

The whale had initially deposited 1.1 trillion PEPE tokens worth $14.42 million to Binance, which were likely also converted to ETH. Consequently, this whale has deposited 1.4 trillion PEPE on Binance in the past two days.

Furthermore, on-chain data shows that whale “0x837” withdrew 1,728 ETH worth 5.86 million from Binance, increasing its accumulation to 4,374 ETH worth $14.91 million over the last two days.

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Anticipated Launch Of Spot Ethereum ETFs

This whale’s decision to convert all of its PEPE holdings into ETH despite being at a loss suggests a deliberate strategic investment decision. This action reflects the market’s confidence in Ethereum, fueled by the potential launch of Spot Ethereum ETFs in July

Many market participants have drawn parallels with the events that occurred with the launch of Spot Bitcoin ETFs and speculated that Ethereum could see a similar surge. According to Bryan Armour, an ETF analyst at Morningstar, the launch of Spot Ethereum ETFs might not generate the same level of excitement as Bitcoin did, given the differences in market size of both cryptocurrencies.

At the time of writing, PEPE is trading at $0.00001129 and has recovered slightly since Saturday’s lows. However, the meme token has experienced a 3.58% and 3.77% decline in the past 24 hours and seven days, respectively. Ethereum has also experienced a 3.2% decline in the past seven days and is currently trading at $3,390.

Featured image from Reddit, chart from TradingView