Cryptocurrencies hold the potential to significantly transform global financial systems — either through reconfiguring the mechanisms of transaction or serving as a new store of value . Even with all of the institutional adoption and increasing mainstream appeal seen over the last couple of years, it’s important to note that these factors are still nascent — and that the primary drivers in this new space are still speculative investments . While instances of savvy traders turning pennies into generational wealth have become a rarer sight as the industry matures, they do still happen. As of late, most such trades have been in the domain of meme coins — with risky, short-term gambits. However, playing the long game can still pay off in a big way — provided that one knows what they are doing. Back in mid-April of 2023, one trader bought 4.91 trillion Pepe (PEPE) — exchanging a variety of other coins and tokens worth a grand total of $3,000 at the time for his stake in the meme coin. At press time, PEPE was trading at $0.00002513, up a staggering 8,276% from the $0.00000030 it was trading at when the trader acquired it. December 2023. PEPE price 1-year chart. Source: CoinMarketCap Although meme coins like PEPE are not renowned for their stability, this trader has managed to steadily cash out on his initial bet — locking in millions of dollars worth of profit, with millions more yet to be realized. Here is how they did it. Long-term PEPE bet pays off On April 25, 2023, the trader exchanged 20,000 Liquidity Incentive Tokens (LIT) worth $2,256 at the time for 3,407,945,165,404, PEPE. Less than half an hour later, they sold 0.1 Ethereum ( ETH ), worth $210 at the time, for an additional 457,332,932,276 PEPE. Another fifteen minutes later, 500 USD Coins ( USDC ) worth $499 were exchanged for 1,048,914,082,342 PEPE. In total, $2,965 was spent to acquire the roughly 4.91 trillion units of PEPE, according to data retrieved by Finbold from Etherscan . Since then, the trader has consistently been selling off his stake — having sold roughly 3.03 trillion PEPE in exchange for $27.5 million in profit. The initial purchases of PEPE. Source: Etherscan Now, on December 9, an additional 100 billion PEPE were sold — worth approximately $2.8 million at the time. This has brought the trader’s realized gains up to roughly $30.3 million. The address in question still holds 1.88 trillion PEPE — bringing the worth of the remaining stake to approximately $47,414,400. If it were to somehow be liquidated all at once at these prices, it would bring the trader’s total profit up to $77.7 million. Featured image via Shutterstock The post Crypto trader makes $77 million on a $3k investment appeared first on Finbold .
