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A new meme coin – Pepe Unchained (PEPU) – is off to a strong start in its presale, raising close to $700k in just over a week. 

PEPU’s fundraising figures are considerably more impressive when considering the bearish broader market sentiment over the last month that has caused heavy corrections in large-cap meme coins. 

The new meme token’s strong early demand has impressed several smart money traders, many of whom are even calling PEPU the next PEPE alternative. 

Why PEPU Could Be The Next Pepe?

Pepe has emerged as the de facto meme coin leader during this bull cycle, even as Dogecoin still has a much higher market capitalization. The former has witnessed much higher gains – over 630% in the past year as compared to 80% for DOGE.

Experts do not expect this trend to reverse over the coming months, especially after the spot Ethereum ETFs start trading. PEPE shows a strong correlation with ETH and could therefore receive a significant boost from the recently approved ETFs. 

To extract maximum profitability in such a scenario, smart money traders have been on the lookout for additional Pepe The Frog-themed meme coins, and for good reason. Meme tokens tend to move in hordes, with newer tokens often acting as a beta play on the original. 

Already, new meme cryptos such as Pepecoin, PeiPei and PepeFork have seen notable success, even if only in the short term. However, these copycat coins do not offer any advantage over the original PEPE, with most smart money traders viewing them as nothing better than pump-and-dump tokens.

On the contrary, Pepe Unchained is aiming to be a significant improvement over the original, promising “double the staking rewards, double the PEPE and 100x the fun!”

Indeed, Pepe Unchained is launching its own Layer-2 blockchain, one that is entirely compatible with Ethereum. The move is expected to significantly reduce PEPU’s transaction costs and confirmation time while offering significantly higher staking rewards to early buyers. 

Unsurprisingly, this rare move has caught the attention of smart money traders and crypto influencers. Even the popular crypto educational platform 99Bitcoins – which has over 700k subscribers on X – recently praised this innovative concept and its high upside potential. 

Early Buyers Can Earn Upto 3000% Staking Rewards With Pepe Unchained

As previously mentioned, Pepe Unchained can offer much higher staking rewards than the industry standard, thanks to its native Layer-2 blockchain. 

In fact, the PEPU staking dashboard reveals that stakers are currently receiving an APY of over 3000%. 

Early buyers are set to benefit the most, considering the yield percentage will decrease as an increasing number of tokens are staked in the pool. Nevertheless, it is still expected to be much higher than Ethereum’s 2% to 5% APY.

This lucrative passive income is a major attraction for retail investors and serves as an incentive for long-term holding, consequently decreasing the likelihood of pump-and-dump price action.

According to the Pepe Unchained whitepaper, a significant 30% of the token supply has been allocated towards its staking rewards, which will be disbursed over a two-year period. 

Meanwhile, 20% of the supply has been reserved for the ongoing presale and marketing each. The remaining funds have been split equally amongst token liquidity, project finance and chain inventory. Investors can check out the project whitepaper here. 

Pepe Unchained Price Potential – Could PEPU Deliver 10x Returns?

As previously mentioned, Pepe The Frog-themed tokens have seen significant short-term growth, which bodes well for PEPU. However, there is a reason why experts are viewing PEPU as the next Pepe and not the other tokens. 

Owing to the heavy traffic on Ethereum, it is extremely costly to invest in ERC-20 meme coins, especially for retail investors. The trading fees on DEXs such as Uniswap can often go as high as over a hundred dollars. As a result, the aforementioned meme coins see limited retail investment and suffer heavily from whale manipulation. 

On the contrary, Pepe Unchained’s native Layer-2 blockchain is set to reduce the trading cost. In fact, investors can choose to buy PEPU by swapping any of ETH, BNB or USDT during the presale. 

Consequently, experts are projecting much higher retail involvement, which is already evident from its presale figures. 

Popular YouTube trading experts have even signalled at the possibility of 10x gains after PEPU’s launch, calling it the next Pepe.

Visit Pepe Unchained Presale

*Cryptonomist did not write the article or test the platform.