Why is PEPE Up? Price Jumps as Whales Pile In, Bitcoin Breaks $118K in Broad Crypto Rally

The price of PEPE

shot up 14% over the last 24 hours, driven by large-scale buying and a broader rebound across the cryptocurrency space that saw bitcoin top the $118,000 mark.

The token surged from $0.000011141 to $0.000012812, adding fuel to a sector that thrives on online hype and sudden bursts of trading. While the broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose 7.3% in the last 24-hour period, the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) is up 11.3% in the same period.

Behind the spike was also whale activity. Data from Nansen shows that the top 100 addresses holding PEPE have added more than 1% to their holdings just in the past day, to 304.1 trillion PEPE, while exchanges holdings have kept on dropping.

Over the past month, the top 100 PEPE addresses grew their holdings by 2.3%, while the total amount of tokens held on exchanges dropped by 2.17% to 252.2 trillion.

Technical signals hint at sustained momentum for PEPE. During the rally, the token traded in an 18% range between lows of $0.000009823 and highs of $0.000013068. A key resistance level emerged at $0.000012482, with price reversals happening there on heavy volume, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis data model.

Meanwhile, solid support held near $0.000011013 as traders bought dips aggressively.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.