The circumstances behind the mysterious withdrawal of $16 million from the Pepecoin (PEPE) project’s multi-signature wallet appear to have come to light, pointing the finger at three cheating former team members.
On August 24, the price of PEPE plummeted by about 15% amid fears of a potential pull after the community discovered that $16 million worth of PEPE had been withdrawn from the Pepe multisig wallet and sent to multiple exchanges.
1/4
1 hour ago, the Pepe multisig wallet changed the number of signatures required for its multisig from 5/8 to 2/8.This is after sending $15.7 million worth of $PEPE to communicate.
Segments we know about: pic.twitter.com/bxBxp6Nzqz
— ASXN (@asxn_r) August 24, 2023
To clarify the matter, an anonymous founding member behind Pepecoin published a post on X (Twitter) on Aug. 25, issuing a community announcement via the @pepecoineth account detailing what they claim happened.
According to the statement, three team members suddenly stole funds from the multisig and then abandoned the project entirely, leaving it in the hands of the only remaining member.
“Multisignature setup requires 3/4 signers to be present to get approved. Yesterday these 3 ex-team members came back behind my back, logged into multisig and stole $16 trillion / 26 trillion in multisig tokens 60% and send them to exchanges for sale.”
“They then removed themselves from the multisig, tried to exonerate any affiliation with $PEPE, deleted all their social accounts, and just left me a message saying ‘multisig has been updated, you now have full control’” they added.
Towards $PEPE Community:
Yesterday, August 24, 2023, a series of unexpected transactions from $PEPE Multi-signature CEX
~16 trillion in wallet $PEPE Tokens (worth about $15 million) were transferred to various cryptocurrency exchanges (OKX, Binance… pic.twitter.com/iZmXV1TAvw— Pepe (@pepecoineth) August 26, 2023
The founding member claimed that the X account and the remaining 10 trillion PEPE in multisig are now in safe hands and that the funds will be transferred to a new wallet where “they will rest safely until usage or destruction occurs”.
It has also been claimed that the former members have been difficult to work with since Pepecoin launched in April and hindered the project’s progress towards its various goals.
related: PEPE whale seizes dip, buys $529,000 worth of tokens
Looking ahead, the remaining members claim that they will do the right thing for the PEPE community now that the bad guys are gone.
“Unfortunately, $PEPE has been plagued by internal conflict since its inception, with some team members being bad actors led by arrogance and greed,” they said, adding:
“As I process what happened, I look forward to a future of $PEPE where I will be able to operate with the best intentions of the community and the token, and there will be no negligent team members and locked multisig situations stopping me Do what’s best”.
telegram group for $PEPE Currently locked, the group owner’s old Telegram account was hacked and the group was taken over. In the process of trying to regain access or create new access.all official communications $PEPE will pass @pepecoineth… pic.twitter.com/lQFTu02jub
— Pepe (@pepecoineth) August 26, 2023
Reactions were mixed in the comments, with some supporting or favoring the news while others questioned the veracity of the claims.
According to data from CoinGecko, as of this writing, the price of PEPE has increased by 5.7% in the past 24 hours to $0.000000895278, with a current market cap of $382.7 million.
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