Team Behind Memecoin Pepe Issues Statement Regarding Massive Transfer of Coins to Crypto Exchanges

The team behind Pepe (PEPE), the memecoin that’s taken crypto markets by storm this year, has issued a statement regarding a large transfer of coins that caught its community’s attention.

A Pepe community leader posted to social media platform X to announce that some of the project’s personnel turned into “bad actors” who were in conflict with the remaining team members.

According to the statement, all founding members except one anonymous entity have sold their stake and abandoned the project, which led to the heavy price correction last week when large amounts of PEPE were sent to crypto exchanges.

Says Pepe’s X account,

“I am shocked at what took place and would like to apologize for all of the fear and uncertainty and any losses the actions of these bad actors have caused members of our community. The CEX- (centralized exchange) wallet tokens were never meant to be sold on the market or for the team to profit from.

Had I been in charge myself the whole time, I would’ve made some donations and burned the majority of the CEX wallet long ago. I can assure you that the control of this Twitter account as well as the remaining 10 trillion tokens in the multi-sig are safe and in control of someone who has the best interests of everybody and PEPE at hand, inaccessible by the nefarious ex team-members.”

The announcement says that the tokens that were transferred, or “stolen,” were ultimately sold on crypto exchanges OKX and Binance.

The lone team member clarifies that they’re planning on seeing the project through, and has begun reaching out to potential new team members to carry Pepe into the next phase.

“As I process what has happened, I look forward to a future for PEPE where I will be able to operate with the community and token’s best intention in mind and no negligent team members and locked multi-sig situation blocking me from doing what is best. I have started discussions with some prominent community members who will be helping me guide things forward, and I am excited to be in the position to do everything we can to set up PEPE to thrive as the decentralized and anti-fragile memecoin asset it deserves to be.”

At time of writing, PEPE is trading at $0.000000868, down by about 30% in the last week.