PEPE reaches new high amid ETH price jump on renewed ETF approval hopes

Ethereum-based memecoin Pepe surged 27% to a new all-time high over the past 24 hours, driven by speculation around the potential approval of spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the United States.

“PEPE is probably the best memecoin play for the ETH ETF,” crypto trader Matthew Hyland claimed in a May 21 X post.

Pseudonymous crypto trader “Kaleo” added it was funny how ETH is moving and PEPE is now one of the most obvious hindsight trades out there.”

Ether (ETH $3,735) is up 23.28% over the past two days to $3,785 amid renewed hope that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is moving to approve spot Ether ETFs by a May 23 deadline — an unexpected turn of events for analysts and the crypto industry.

Pepe (PEPE) is trading at $0.00001387, up 23.48% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.

PEPE is up 22.25% over the past seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap

Pseudonymous crypto trader “Plazma” thinks PEPE’s upward trend will continue but expects brief volatile periods along the way.

“PEPE price discovery should continue for the next few weeks with some normal breaks for a few days and the usual pullbacks. We will be at 2x-3x in just a few weeks,” they wrote in a May 21 X post.

Meanwhile, PEPE’s open interest (OI) — measuring the total value of all outstanding PEPE futures contracts across crypto exchanges — rose 40% to $172.96 million over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data.

An OI rise usually indicates traders are more confident entering future positions on a cryptocurrency, with the data showing a significant number in long positions.

PEPE’s price spike over the past 24 hours saw $6 million in short positions liquidated. Source: CoinGlass

If PEPE’s price drops 6% it would liquidate $10 million in long positions.

PEPE led in price growth among the top 10 memecoins by market capitalization over the past 24 hours, but other top memecoins also saw significant price jumps over the past week.

Bonk (BONK) is up 40.80%, Floki (FLOKI) is up 21.94%, and Book of Memes (BOME) is up 25.04%.