On May 5th, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced the addition of the meme coins PEPE and FLOKI, which have been trending in the cryptocurrency market due to their exorbitant price increases in recent days.

According to Binance’s statement, both tokens were listed on May 5th at 16:00 PM (UTC), allowing users to make spot purchases of FLOKI/USDT, FLOKI/TUSD, PEPE/USDT, and PEPE/TUSD. Withdrawals for both coins will be enabled starting tomorrow at 16:00 PM (UTC).

#Binance will list @pepecoineth $PEPE and @RealFlokiInu $FLOKI in the innovation zone. https://t.co/yxcINj0whc pic.twitter.com/o4UTvWZkHj

— Binance (@binance) May 5, 2023

Binance warns that PEPE has no utility

Binance warned in their statement that the PEPE token “has no utility and was created by an anonymous team”, so they invited their users to properly research before investing in these types of tokens.

“FLOKI and PEPE are relatively new tokens that pose a higher than normal risk, and as such will likely be subject to high price volatility. Please ensure that you exercise sufficient risk management, have done your own research in regards to FLOKI and PEPE’s fundamentals, and fully understand the projects before opting to trade the tokens.”

Additionally, they explained that “there are signs that certain insiders or team members were able to buy 7% of the total token supply minutes after TGE.” This means that the price of PEPE in dollars could collapse at any time if project members with the largest holdings decide to sell their tokens.

Even on the PEPE website, they warn that “the coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only”, and it was created to become the largest of its kind, surpassing popular ones like Dogecoin (DOGE) or Shiba Inu (SHIB).

PEPE price increased more than 1200% in a week

Despite Binance’s warnings, the FUD around these meme coins has been so great that even on Twitter, the hashtag #PEPE became a worldwide trend with more than 4 million tweets at the time of Binance’s announcement.

This led to the price of PEPE, which already had an increase of over 800% during the last week, rising to a high of 136% today, from $0.0000019 to a peak of $0.0000045.

At the time of writing, PEPE maintains a market cap of over $1.1 billion, according to CoinGecko. This market cap has been amassed in less than a month since its creation.