Investors of the popular meme coin, $PEPE, were (understandably) alarmed on Thursday after millions of dollars worth of $PEPE were suddenly transferred to crypto exchanges, including Binance, OKX, and Bybit.

Interestingly, this incident marked the first instance in which the project’s essential multi-sig wallet participated in sending out PEPE tokens. 

Thursday’s sudden surge of over 16 trillion $PEPE tokens naturally created apprehension among investors, also causing a subsequent drop in its trading price.

This strangely followed what appears to be an even more alarming phenomenon – changing the number of required crypto wallets required to “sign off” on a transaction that authorizes the crypto transaction to go through.

PEPE’s multi-sig wallet, which is responsible for safeguarding a substantial portion of $PEPE tokens and is one of the largest holders of the meme coin, previously required approval from five out of eight designated wallets (5/8 signatures) to authorize any given transaction. 

However, according to some “on-chain sleuths,” they noted these troubling changes after the multi-sig wallet suddenly reduced that threshold to just two out of eight signatures (2/8 signatures). 

Memecoins like Pepe Coin, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu, are digital currencies created and promoted around a popular internet meme or cultural trend.

Pepe Coin, for example, was inspired by Pepe the Frog, while Dogecoin, was inspired by a 2013 joke between Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. 

In the digital asset landscape, these meme-coins are often created as a joke or a way to mock the serious nature of traditional cryptocurrencies – with the irony being that they can still gain and maintain significant value based on its community following. 

On Friday (Aug. 25), the official PEPE Twitter account posted a lengthy explanation, claiming that three ex-team members had stolen the funds. Read the full post below.

This is a developing story and will be updated with more details.

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