An anonymous user made a 4,718x profit on their investment in the meme coin Pepe. They bought 1.5 trillion PEPE for $2,184 and sold 1.02 trillion PEPE for $6.66 million, earning a total profit of $10.3 million, according to Lookonchain.

A $PEPE OG sold 150B $PEPE($1.14M) again 5 hours ago.

This OG spent only $2,184 to buy 1.5T $PEPE($43M at the peak) in the early stage.

He sold 1.02T $PEPE for $6.66M, leaving 493B $PEPE($3.64M), with a total profit of $10.3M(4,718x).https://t.co/tyzLr10sGj pic.twitter.com/FD6fFpyqCi
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 29, 2025

At its peak on December 9, 2024, their position was valued at $43 million. At that time, PEPE had surged to $0.00002825, but has since dropped to $0.00000684.

After partially locking in profits, the long position was reduced to 493 billion PEPE ($3.64 million).

In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Radix founder Dan Hughes noted that meme coins generally do not accumulate external capital—instead, the existing capital “flows” from one asset to another.

“Even in the case of TRUMP, most of the incoming liquidity was driven by outflows from other coins. Users were selling their portfolios to buy the ‘presidential token’ amid extreme FOMO,” he added.

Are Meme Coins a Casino?

River Financial CEO and Bitcoin maximalist Alex Leishman warned that crypto exchanges listing altcoins are dooming themselves to an endless cycle of launching meme coins. According to him, if a CEX has already listed ETH and SOL, then it “makes no sense” for it to ignore coins from those ecosystems.

There are two paths for a crypto exchange/brokerage:

1. Bitcoin-only path – focus on helping people build and preserve long term wealth through hard money. This path leads to an exchange looking more like a "bank" long term.

2. Multi-asset trading platform – add as many coins…
— Alexander Leishman 🇺🇸 (@Leishman) March 29, 2025

“Once a platform adds one non-Bitcoin token, it signs up for the eternal ‘hamster wheel’ of meme coins,” he stated.

The entrepreneur believes that such exchanges prioritize short-term speculation over wealth accumulation.

“The casino business model is built on maximizing money extraction from clients, whereas a Bitcoin-only model aims to help people build long-term wealth,” he explained.

Earlier, Messari noted that meme coin trading volumes on DEXs had dropped to a yearly low.

Bernstein analysts predicted a liquidity shift from the sector into DeFi and NFTs. They believe that the cooling hype around “funny coins” will positively impact stablecoins and RWA.

As a reminder, Cryptol previously explored the phenomenon of AI-related meme token popularity in an exclusive report.