One of the original members of the PEPE development team released a statement that pointed the finger at fellow developers regarding a massive drop in tokens stored in a team multi-signature (multisig) wallet.
In the wake of the PEPE devaluation, which saw the currency plummet by up to 20% from August 24th to the 25th, @pepecoineth apologized for the event and announced steps to restore trust in the coin.
Big Egos and Greed Caused the Dump of PEPE Token
The developer stated that “big egos and greed” caused the dump of multisignature tokens. The PEPE price went down because the token development team made transactions from their wallet. The wallet held 6.9% of PEPE’s total supply previously.
On Thursday, the wallet moved about 16 billion tokens to cryptocurrency exchanges. After that, some members of the team lowered the number of signatures needed to control the wallet, from 5/8 to 2/8. This can be observed in a PEPE price chart published by BeInCrypto.
PEPE developer @pepecoineth accused team members of acting against the group for the recent issue on Twitter. @Pepecoineth stated that the crew had four developers, but three of the original members have already gone from the initiative and carried away over half of the team’s tokens.
They left multisig wallet to distance themselves from $PEPE, deleting all social media accounts. The only message I received was ‘multisig upgraded, you’re in control.’ @pepecoineth revealed new information about the founding team, stating that internal conflicts and greed led to some team members becoming bad actors with big egos. Unfortunately, $PEPE has been plagued by these issues since its creation.
Pepe Developers Are in a Dispute over Assets Control
PEPE developers are in a dispute over control of the assets held in the team wallet. The funds were reserved for specific purposes, as stated on the official PEPE website. These include future exchange listings, bridges, and liquidity. The funds were successfully used for previous exchange listings on centralized exchanges.
However, @pepecoineth’s statement has revealed that there have been disagreements about control of the wallet in the past. He pointed out that: If I were in charge from the beginning, I would have given some money away and destroyed most of the wallet a while ago.
As for the project’s media files, it seems that one person has control over the @pepecoineth X account; however, who owns PEPE’s official Telegram channel is still unclear.
A message on the channel announced that PEPE Telegram group is currently inaccessible as the group owner’s old Telegram account was hacked, and the group was taken over during the process of regaining access or creating a new one. Until further notice, all official PEPE communications will be made through @pepepe account, and new official group links will be shared here.
Going forward, @pepecoineth promised supporters that they would move the remaining 10 billion tokens from the multi-signature wallet to a new location.
According to his initial statement, the money is secure and managed by someone who has the best interests of everyone and $PEPE in mind and is inaccessible to malicious former team members.
Pepecoineth will keep PEPE’s $10 billion while planning for the future. They are in talks to buy specific web domains and usernames.
Additionally, they plan to give away some of their multi-signature tokens and destroy the remaining ones.
By Leonardo Pérez
