PEPE bulls have encountered challenges in their attempts to push up the meme cryptocurrency’s price over the past week. Notably, PEPE has experienced a decline of approximately 4% in the last 24 hours alone, with a more substantial drop of 6.5% over the course of the past seven days.
The selling sentiment surrounding PEPE has increased significantly since the middle of July. Throughout this period, the meme coin has struggled to break above resistance at $0.0000126, facing repeated failures each time it approached this critical price point.
A deeper analysis of market behavior reveals that this prevailing selling sentiment can be largely attributed to a notable shift in the composition of PEPE investors. There has been a strong increase in the number of short-term holders, accompanied by a corresponding decrease in long-term holders.
Jump In Short-Term Holders
According to on-chain data from IntoTheBlock, short-term PEPE holders have increased noticeably in the past 30 days. This observation is derived from IntoTheBlock’s Balance by Time Held metric, which follows the variation over time of the balance in wallet addresses and groups them into holders, cruisers, and traders, depending on their average time.
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Notably, this metric shows that the balance in the wallets belonging to the trader cohort has increased by over 31% in the past 30 days. This is interesting because the trader cohort is made up of those who generally hold their assets for less than a month before selling. The behavior of this cohort suggests a shift towards more speculative trading, as these investors are looking to capitalize on quick market movements rather than committing to long-term.
On the other hand, the balance in cruiser addresses have fallen by 6.24% in the same timeframe. Cruisers are those addresses that hold their tokens for between one to twelve months before selling. This decrease in the balance of cruisers suggests many long-term holders have been selling their PEPE tokens in the past 30 days.
What Does This Mean For PEPE?
The influx of short-term holders is creating a more volatile environment for PEPE. Currently, they account for 20% of the entire circulating supply of PEPE. As these investors tend to buy and sell quickly based on market fluctuations, they are more likely to create frequent price swings. This increased volatility is making it challenging for PEPE to maintain a stable upward trajectory.
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At the time of writing, PEPE is trading at $0.00001135. Although the crypto is still up by 42% from a 2-month low of $0.000007975 recorded on July 5, the upward trajectory has been stalled by the activity of short-term holders. PEPE now finds itself trading around a two-week significant support of $0.00001133. A bounce above this price point would enable PEPE to resume its uptrend and continue approaching the $0.00002 threshold.
Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com
