Recently, rumors have circulated (from the Arkham blockchain monitoring platform) that Sun is trading PEPE, with two of his wallet addresses holding $50 million worth of PEPE.

One of the addresses withdrew 4.65 trillion PEPE tokens on October 17, worth $20.32 million. The other withdrew 7.2 trillion PEPE tokens on October 26, worth $28.44 million.

The news immediately triggered a market reaction: PEPE surged, moving completely independently of Bitcoin. During this period, Bitcoin mostly pulled back from lower levels, while PEPE hit a new high of 0.0053. It has now fallen back to 0.00478.

PEPE's market cap has now climbed back above $2 billion, and Sun's $50 million is equivalent to about 3% of its total market cap.

As for why Sun bought so much PEPE, he hasn't made any comment or responded so far. Of course, some people in the market are saying that Poloniex is Sun's own exchange, so it's possible this was simply a transfer between his own wallets.

We've talked about PEPE before. It's a meme coin that launched in 2023. Back then, its market cap climbed to $10 billion before rapidly declining. Its peak was 0.028, and its low this cycle was 0.002—a 90% drop. In this bull market, it's only risen 100%, which is actually rather weak. As we said before, an altcoin this cycle can't be considered high-quality unless it's up more than 200%, given that even ETH has risen 80%. Lower-market-cap altcoins should rise even more to qualify.

So although PEPE is up 100% and sentiment has picked up, it still can't be considered an outstanding performer. It's just been outperforming BTC lately.

Another potential positive for PEPE is that Canary Capital filed for a spot PEPE ETF in early October, with the approval window expected around December, so the market may be pricing in some expectations.

A lot of people are also speculating about whether Sun might make a move on PEPE. I don't think it's very likely, since he already has so many projects of his own—TRX, HTX, BTT, JST, and so on. Why would he pump an altcoin he doesn't control instead of his own tokens?

Another thing is that PEPE has a lot of retail investors, so the market makers may be reluctant to push its price up. But could there still be opportunities in a later meme-coin altcoin season? I think so; we just don't know which coins yet. What's very clear at this point, though, is that a broad-based meme-coin altcoin season probably won't happen. A few individual altcoins could still do well, so for now, I'd suggest focusing mainly on the high-quality leading altcoins we've recommended before.$PEPE