SUI, PEPE Lead Market Losses, Down Double Digits Overnight

The popular meme coin rally fueling the rise of Pepecoin (PEPE) appears to have finally begun to slow.

Per CoinGecko, PEPE has fallen by nearly 11% this morning. Still, over the week, the meme coin has risen a whopping 215%.

Launched mid-April, the frog-inspired token quickly gathered steam, entering the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap last week. Today, PEPE is the 52nd-largest cryptocurrency and has a market capitalization of $965 million at press time.

The rally was helped along after Binance listed PEPE and Floki Inu (FLOKI) in it’s so-called Innovation Zone. Per the exchange, this zone is meant to host hyper-volatile cryptocurrencies, with interested investors expected to understand the potential for total loss.

Alongside PEPE, Sui network’s native SUI token also dropped 11% overnight.

The Move-based blockchain network’s mainnet launched last week, along with an initial distribution of tokens.

While the project’s launch brought considerable attention to the Sui ecosystem, its NFT ecosystem, in particular, exploded as users looked to mint the earliest collections on the network.

The token likely saw selling pressure due to the massive gains for around 96,000 community members who purchased 1,500 SUI tokens for $45. The team unlocked 528 million out of the total SUI’s supply of 10 billion.

This small investment turned to over $3,200 at last week’s peak price of $2.16, according to CoinGecko data.

Amid today’s bearish move, this would suggest that at least a few of those traders are grabbing profits.

SUI tokenomics take center stage

Amid the heightened selling pressure on SUI, analysts have also raised concerns about tokens allocated to market makers and investors.

For starters, market makers have been allocated 75% of the token’s initial circulating supply. Analysts have called the hefty distribution to market makers “predatory” as market makers usually hedge their positions, which creates potential selling pressure if they decide to close their positions.

Additionally, around 44% of the total supply is allocated toward the team, investors, and early contributors.

Data from TokenUnlocks shows that the vesting schedule has a significant unlock of 14% of its total supply in December 2023.