An artist drew a
#frog that became a hate symbol, a political mascot, a banned image and a $11 billion cryptocurrency. He profited from none of it.
> Matt Furie was an artist in San Francisco when he drew
$PEPE the Frog for an indie comic called Boy's Club.
> Pepe's entire personality was one line: "Feels good man." That was it.
> A chill frog who liked pulling his pants all the way down at the urinal.
> By 2008 the "feels good man" panel had spread to 4chan and taken on a life of its own.
> By 2015
#Pepe # was one of the most recognizable memes on the internet.
> Then in 2016 the alt right adopted him as a symbol.
> Donald Trump retweeted a Pepe version of himself.
> The Anti Defamation League added Pepe to their official hate symbol database in September 2016.
> Furie watched his chill frog, the one he drew for a comic about roommates become a registered hate symbol.
> He launched a campaign to reclaim him. It didn't work.
> So on May 6, 2017 he published one final comic where Pepe dies peacefully in a casket surrounded by his friends.
> He killed his own creation to take it back. The internet resurrected him anyway.
> On April 17, 2023 an anonymous developer launched
$PEPE on Ethereum.
> It was just a frog on a blockchain.
> In less than three weeks it crossed $1.6 billion in market cap and by late 2024 it peaked above $11 billion.
> When someone told Matt Furie that a coin worth billions had been made from his character, he said "Actually, this is the first I've heard of it".
> "What is Pepe coin?" he said. "I've heard of Ethereum and Bitcoin and Dogecoin, is it a bit like that?"
> He received nothing. Not a single dollar. One of the developers who worked on the project bought a Lamborghini for $865,000.
Eighteen years of his character being used, misused, killed and resurrected without his permission. The $11 billion was just the last chapter he wasn't invited to.