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A large holder of the Pepe memecoin styled on the Pepe the Frog cartoon has a new trade — a token created by using OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model for $69 called Turbo. 

A whale who has earned $14.5 million trading Pepe has been buying Turbo since May 3, according to on-chain data analyzed by Lookonchain. The trader is in the green, having bought 1.38 billion Turbo tokens for $977,000 that are now currently worth around $1.9 million.

“This whale was not an early buyer of $PEPE, but he kept buying $PEPE from Apr 19 to 27 when the price of $PEPE was depressed,” Lookonchain wrote on Twitter. “So is he buying $TURBO because he knows something we don’t?”

Turbo token surge comes amid fresh memecoin craze

The action is the latest in a fresh memecoin craze that has some wondering if crypto winter may be ending. Trading in the tokens is obviously risky, and decentralized exchange Uniswap currently has a warning posted about the token. That hasn’t stopped it from surging 53.3% over the past 24 hours, according to DexScreener. 

Turbo was launched last month, with its developer saying on Twitter that the memecoin was “built from scratch with ChatGPT-4.”

The project’s whitepaper details a budget of $69, a total supply of 69 billion tokens and says the memecoin “aims to establish itself as a leading meme coin with a unique identity and a strong focus on simplicity, fairness, and community engagement.”

The token has more than doubled in price since trading ramped up earlier this month, and it currently has a market cap of $97.4 million, according to CoinMarketCap, which would place it among the top 10 memecoins.

It’s seen volume over the past 24 hours reach $156.6 million, the fourth-most traded memecoin behind Pepe, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The 10T Holdings-led round had a $135 million post-money valuation.

The protocol aims to eliminate the need for token bridges, wraps and swaps to make moving crypto tokens between blockchains safer.

Those already using stablecoins and lightning transactions are not affected, but for many in Africa, higher bitcoin fees are a problem.

Seemingly trying to take advantage of the frothy rollercoaster ride that has been Pepe, at least two Twitter accounts posted offers to mint free NFTs for anyone holding the memecoin.

Only the posted link advertises a supply of 10,000 available NFTs despite the obvious red flag of linking to a collection minted a few days ago and only had 6,969 total non-fungible tokens on offer.

“Navigating to the minting page of the tweet, you’ll find a section titled ‘Buy a Pepe NFT’,” which misleadingly redirects to an NFT collection named Lofi-Pepe, noted The Block Research Analyst Brad Kay. “Funny enough, the official Lofi-Pepe collection, which launched on May 6th, caps at a (fitting) total supply of 6,969. This deceptive practice is a common tactic employed by scammers, luring unsuspecting buyers into fraudulent transactions.”

Crypto scams looking to latch onto the latest craze in digital assets, like this one with Pepe, have for years been such a common occurrence much of the market is numb to it. The two misleading Twitter posts have been reposted and liked tens of thousands of times — a process possibly driven by bots but one that nonetheless makes the pitch appear more genuine. 

Bots are such a problem, they almost stopped Elon Musk from going through with his purchase of Twitter last year. He has railed against the fake accounts, at one point saying he “will defeat the spam bots or die trying.”  

A call to connect their wallets

The suspicious link asks potential buyers to connect their wallets in order to mint one of the 10,000 Pepe NFTs. The link also references not only the official Lofi-Pepe collection but also the gaming platform Topia, which envisions itself as the “next Minecraft.” It would appear linking to the two legitimate companies is an effort to make the link appear trustworthy.

Kay advises would-be purchasers of Pepe NFTs be increasingly vigilant. With the suspicious link, he said, “unwary investors may believe they’re purchasing from the Lofi-Pepe collection, only to be defrauded of their tokens or inadvertently mint a different collection entirely.”

Both the Lofi-Pepe collection and Topia did not immediately respond for comment. A contact for the Twitter accounts promoting the seemingly fraudulent Pepe collection, @Miley18397515 and @StarkZ_ETHs, could not be found.

The official Lofi-Pepe collection has surpassed $2 million in trading volume since launching, according to CryptoSlam! data.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The crypto-friendly bank announced earlier in the year support for USDC services.

Roughly six months after Pudgy Penguins CEO denied the NFT collection was seeking to raise up to $10 million, it has announced securing $9 million in the completion of its seed round.

The round was led by 1kx, “an early-stage investment firm that specializes in ecosystem growth,” the collection said in a statement.  Big Brain Holdings, Kronos Research, the founders of LayerZero Labs, Old Fashion Research, and CRIT Ventures also participated, according to the statement.

Last November, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz said The Block’s story that his collection sought to raise up to $10 million was “all wrong information,” and warned he would publicly brand any story on the subject “fake news.”

The collection launched in 2021 and Netz acquired it the next year. Last week, it said Hollywood talent agency WME will represent the collection as it pursues “relationships in film, TV, and gaming.”

In its funding statement, Pudgy Penguins said it would use the fresh capital to help monetize its brand’s intellectual property through, in part, merchandising.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The $60 million hack in 2016 led to a controversial revision of the blockchain, and was a factor leading to the ICO boom starting the following year, argues David Z Morris. This feature is part of our “CoinDesk Turns 10” series.

The addition will allow wallet developers to incorporate Face ID, fingerprints, and other convenient authentication methods into their products.

Digital Asset, the financial technology firm co-founded by DRW’s Don Wilson, is launching a privacy-enabled blockchain — and some of the biggest names in finance and tech are on board. 

Goldman Sachs, Moody’s, DRW, and Microsoft are among the firms joining the blockchain, dubbed Canton Network. It will be a privacy-enabled interoperable blockchain explicitly designed for institutional assets, according to the release.

The other firms involved include BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Cboe Global Markets, Cumberland, Deloitte, Deutsche Börse Group, DRW, Liberty City Ventures, Paxos, Right Pedal LendOS, S&P Global, SBI Digital Asset Holdings, Umbrage, Versana, VERT Capital, Xpansiv, and Zinnia.

Canton Network is an example of Capgemini and Digital Asset’s other partners “harnessing the power of blockchain to build a financial ecosystem that everyone can depend on,” Sankar Krishnan, head of digital assets and fintech at Capgemini, said in the release. 

The blockchain aims to provide “seamless connectivity across various blockchain networks in the industry,” which is an essential “building block for future digital and distributed financial market infrastructures,” according to Deutsche Börse Group’s Jens Hachmesiter, head of issuer services & new digital markets at the exchange.

According to the release, the participating firms will begin testing the blockchain’s interoperability capabilities across various applications and use cases in July.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.