Amid the market crash, whales are returning to old meme token PEPE

Despite the crash of meme tokens, whales are returning to one of the older assets, Pepe (PEPE). Three whale wallets started buying up PEPE, with funds originating from Tornado Cash. 

Three whale addresses bought up Pepe (PEPE) despite the slump of meme tokens. On-chain data shows three wallets poured $4.3M into PEPE in the past few hours. 

The original financing trail for the whale wallets was obscured since the whale buyers were financed by addresses connected to the TornadoCash token mixer. Despite operating in a similar manner, the three locations are not directly connected through on-chain data, though their trading behavior is similar. 

3 wallets bought 689.79B $PEPE($4.3M) ~11 hours ago.

The funds of these 3 wallets all come from #TornadoCash.

0x7A7D spent 1,413.4 $ETH($2.72M) to buy 437.7B $PEPE.

0x9212 spent $1M to buy 158.58B $PEPE.

0x7779 spent 299 $ETH($574K) to buy 93.51B $PEPE.

Address:… pic.twitter.com/rhFpg3X8wv

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 12, 2025

The PEPE purchases were made with USDC and WETH after the tokens were mixed. The use of TornadoCash is increasingly suspicious, especially after the Bybit hack. Some of the funds from the hack are untraceable and may seek multiple swap opportunities to be further concealed. After the transactions were discovered on-chain, immediate suspicions arose that the purchases may be attempts to launder stolen funds through PEPE. 

In the past month, TornadoCash activity increased, with ETH deposits growing by 2.3%. Not all TornadoCash deposits are linked to hacks, but the mixer is the main destination for funds taken by the Lazarus group. 

Buyer wallet received funds from blacklist address

The three buyer addresses are relatively new and have mostly interacted with the coin mixer. One of the addresses started by receiving transactions of 100 ETH in the past week. The first buyer’s address was the least active one. 

The second address, which swapped USDC for PEPE, shows a longer trading history. This wallet owner also received inflows from a previously blacklisted USDT address. After funding the wallet with ETH, the wallet holder swapped some of the tokens for USDT, received additional USDC from TornadoCash, and went on to quickly buy PEPE in the span of only an hour. 

The third wallet holder also received funds from blacklisted USDT addresses. The trader bought PEPE with USDC after a series of swaps from WETH and ETH. 

Two of the highly active wallets ended up with over $1.02M in PEPE, while the other buyer held $604K of the meme token. 

PEPE round-trips the past 12 months

PEPE emerged as one of the top meme tokens following the most recent whale purchase, gaining 8.6% over the previous day. While some of the older cults are reviving and earning significant gains, other meme tokens are losing money. 

Additionally, PEPE indicates a rise in trading activity, with Robinhood serving as a primary trading location. Bybit and OKX were also among the token’s top exchanges. As a tool to swap funds quickly, PEPE is liquid enough, including a highly active trading pair on Binance.

PEPE has rallied before as a cult token with dedicated holders and has benefitted from the growth of PolitiFi memes.

One of the memes breaking out was Gigachad (GIGA), with a 39% rally in the past day. The meme space retained some energy to defy the overall market trend, and even the weakness of Ethereum (ETH).

The recent positive performance of PEPE may be linked to a short squeeze and an attempt to revive the meme’s influence. 

PEPE open interest is down to $31.87M, the lowest level in the past six months. The token shed excess liquidity but may start to rebuild speculative bets if it regains its social media influence. PEPE lost holders in the past 30 days, similar to other meme assets, but it is still seen as capable of making a comeback amid a favorable Internet culture. 

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