Why Pepe coin price is going up?

Pepe coin price has begun the new year with a bang as it rose nearly 30% on Dec. 2 after a well-followed trader made a bullish prediction for the Pepe the Frog-inspired meme coin.

Summary

• Pepe coin’s price rallied 30% just a day after the New Year.
• A popular Hyperliquid trader predicted PEPE’s market cap to go up to $69 billion by year’s end.
• A bullish reversal pattern was confirmed on the daily chart.

According to data from crypto.news, Pepe (PEPE) coin shot up 30% to an intraday high of $0.0000052 on Friday, Dec. 2, before stabilizing at around $0.0000051. At this price, the 2nd largest meme coin by market cap stood nearly 45% above last year’s low.

Since July of last year, Pepecoin price has remained in a steady decline, primarily driven by a sector-wide retreat in meme coin valuations. The situation was further complicated by trade tensions between the U.S. and China, which effectively sidelined investor interest in speculative trades.

As crypto.news reported earlier, traders also rotated away from the meme coin after it confirmed a multi-year head and shoulders pattern, which is viewed as a bearish indicator.

Moving on to today, Pepe coin’s stark gains were likely triggered by a very bullish prediction for the meme coin by James Wynn, a well-followed Hyperliquid trader with over 484,000 followers on X.

In his recent forecast, he noted that PEPE could reach a market cap of up to $69 billion by the end of 2026. 

For the uninitiated, Wynn previously predicted that PEPE’s market cap would go to billions when it was at just $600k. Reports show he earned as much as $25 million from his bet on the meme coin.

In a series of X posts, he reinforced his outlook as he compared PEPE to another well-known meme coin, Shiba Inu (SHIB), which surged 11.7x from nearly $3.5 billion to over $41 billion within a month during the previous altcoin cycle. 

As per the trader, PEPE’s social strength stands much stronger than other leading meme tokens like SHIB and could therefore achieve a similar performance this year.

“If Shib can do $41bn, PEPE can do much higher. Keep in mind $DOGE did $88bn. So my target for PEPE is $69bn,” Wynn wrote on X.

Following his prediction, Pepe coin’s market cap rose from $1.72 billion to $2.2 billion within 24 hours, as it sparked heavy buying from community members.

At press time, Pepe coin’s market cap was hovering around $2.15 billion. Based on Wynn’s prediction, it could rise nearly 32 times.

Pepe coin price analysis

Moving on to the daily chart, Pepe coin price has broken out of an decending parallel channel pattern, which often tends to be a precursor to further upside.

At the same time, momentum indicators also showed that bulls are at an advantage. Notably, the MACD lines have pointed upwards while still staying below the zero line. Meanwhile, the RSI had formed a bullish divergence.

For now, $0.0000056 appears to be the next key resistance level that traders should be keeping an eye on. It aligns with the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level and has served as a strong barrier multiple times during Q3 2025. 

A decisive breakout from that level could push the price towards $0.0000074, the next retracement level in the series. The target lies nearly 45% above current price levels.