PEPE price surged to a new global peak of $0.000011 on Thursday, March 14, bringing its gains for the month to a staggering 320%. However, despite the 50% price pullback experienced in the last 48-hours, on-chain data trends reveals the long-term investors continue to hold.
Will swing traders booking profits take a cue from the long-term holders’ optimism and set stage the next phase of the PEPE memecoin price rally?
PEPE is a frog-themed memecoin hosted on the Ethereum-network. Within the first half of March, PEPE has recorded a remarkable 320% rally which saw it reach an all-time high price of $0.000011 on March 14 while its market capitalization surge above $3.5 billion.
As expected, PEPE witnessed rapid profit-taking wave shortly after its erased another zero. At press time on March 17, PEPE price has now dipped 50% from its all-time high recorded barely 72 hours ago.
However, on-chain data trends suggests that PEPE long-term investors, rather than exit at the current prices, are instead holding out for more price gains.
Santiment’s Age Consumed metric tracks the trading activity among long-term holders on a cryptocurrency network, by multiplying the number of coins traded on a given day by the number of days since they were last moved.
Low values of Age Consumed indicates that majority of long-term investors are holding on to their tokens, and vice versa.
The chart above shows that PEPE Age Consumes has remained relatively low compared to the values recorded in previous months.
For context, the highest value for March 2024 was 414.3 trillion Coin Age consumed, recorded on March 14., which is 90% lower than the February peak of 3,776 trillion.
When a crypto asset records a relatively low Age Consumed during a price pullback as observed on the PEPE network this week, it suggests that majority of long-term investors have opted to HODL rather book profits at the current prices.
If the long-term investors maintain this stance, its only a matter of time before short-term swing traders run into fatigue. In essence, PEPE price is likely to hold relatively high support level, giving the bulls a chance to regroup for the next phase of the rally.
The curtailed selling pressure among long-term investors puts PEPE price in good stead to erase another zero and rebound toward $0.000015 in the coming week.
At the time of writing, PEPE is currently trading at $0.000008, just above the 20-day SMA price of $0.0000073. This suggests that the bulls are still largely in control of the short-term market momentum.
But, to kickstart the next wave of the rally, PEPE bulls must first scale the initial resistance roadblock at the $0.000009.
As seen below, 18,610 addresses aped in on the rally and acquired 16.5 trillion PEPE at an average price of $0.00009 last week. Many of them could look to exit once price approach their break-even mark again.
But, if PEPE can breach that sell-wall, a rally toward $0.000015 could be on the cards as predicted.
On the downside, the memecoin markets fails to sustain the level of demand experience in the first two-weeks of March, PEPE price stands the risk of a larger decline below $0.00005.
But this scenario seems unlikely within the current dynamics, given that massive accumulation support territory at $0.00007.
As depicted above 19,050 addresses had recently acquired 69.9 trillion PEPE at the average price $0.000007, which is significantly lager than its neighboring resistance cluster.
Ibrahim Ajibade Ademolawa is a seasoned research analyst with a background in Commercial Banking and Web3 startups, specializing in DeFi and TradFi analysis. He holds a B.A. in Economics and is pursuing an MSc in Blockchain.