During the latest market recovery, PEPE made a comeback and even behaved as a blue chip token. Risky trader James Wynn also joined the game with a 10X leveraged long position.
PEPE, one of the first influential meme tokens, is making a return. In the past week, the asset almost behaved as legacy blue chip assets. PEPE recovered to $0.000014, near its higher range for the past month.
For the last 24 hours, PEPE was even more volatile, moving by a few percents for the past day. PEPE gained over 9% net in the past week, with signs of a larger rally.
Short squeeze drives PEPE traders to take risk
PEPE shows an accumulation of high-leverage short positions, with Binance one of the key markets. More than 23% of PEPE activity is concentrated on Binance, with high-leverage short liquidity up to $0.000016.
PEPE, like other meme tokens, has often rallied following a short squeeze. In the short term, those events are heavily traded, as PEPE volumes increased by over 42% and open interest expanded by 15% to $610M.
Meme tokens also correlate highly with the BTC performance. As the leading coin recovered above $109,000, the entire meme market also turned to the green.
Almost all meme assets posted gains, with the exception of Official Trump (TRUMP). TRUMP slid on ‘selling the news’, after the promised crypto dinner under-delivered on expectations. However, older cult tokens and less active memes compensated the loss, with older communities showing they were still around.
Risky trader James Wynn joins with long position
After trading BTC with a $1B long position, trader James Wynn announced he would allocate any remaining funds in his Hyperliquid account to longing PEPE.
Ok so left a milly in my perps account. Put it all on $pepe 10x leverage.
Up $200k in just a few hours. But man, the itch to open up a billion dollar long and go full degen gambler is calling hahaha…
I will not do it. Gotta get back to my people in the trenches. It’s where I… pic.twitter.com/hg35LxiAZT
— James Wynn 🐳 (@JamesWynnReal) May 26, 2025
Soon after the initial message, Wynn once again stated his confidence in PEPE, though with a risk disclaimer. The long position is starting to get copied by the crypto community, potentially unleashing more volatility for PEPE.
The risky long arrived after Wynn locked in over $25.2M from longing BTC, so he used some of the remaining funds to boost the PEPE rally. Wynn’s risky move may cause counter-trading, or further inflate PEPE in another round of exuberance.
During the May 26 rally, at one point, Wynn’s position held $386K in unrealized gains. The potential of the position may change, as PEPE remains a highly risky token.
This is not the first time Wynn has taken a risky position on Pepe. At the end of March, Wynn had another 10X position at a time when PEPE was correcting. He held onto unrealized losses of $3.36M, depositing extra collateral and partially closing the position.
Other traders on Hyperliquid are also taking high-value long positions, making use of the latest market exuberance. The crypto market fluctuates between greed and extreme greed sentiment, leading to a proliferation of long positions and confidence in an ongoing rally. Meme tokens also show more resilience during a market downturn, due to their relatively low volumes and enthusiasm for recovery from recent lows.
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