Pepe the Frog had a creator long before he had a chart. The character that now lends its name to one of crypto's best-known memecoins started as a hand-drawn comic figure, and its author has
Pepe the Frog had a creator long before he had a chart. The character that now lends its name to one of crypto's best-known memecoins started as a hand-drawn comic figure, and its author has no role in the token.
Cartoonist Matt Furie created Pepe for his 2005 comic Boy's Club. In an NPR report, Furie said in 2017 that the character was meant to represent the Everyman, describing him as a post-college roommate in his twenties who likes naps, video games and smoking weed. In the comic, the frog shares an apartment with roommates Andy, Brett and Landwolf.
Pepe spread widely online during the 2010s and became one of the internet's most recognisable memes. It was also adopted by some far-right users and trolls, which led Furie to enforce his copyright. In 2019, NBC News reported that Infowars agreed to pay $15,000 to resolve a copyright lawsuit over an unauthorised poster featuring Pepe. According to law firm WilmerHale, which represented Furie, the settlement also requires Infowars to destroy remaining posters and stop selling Pepe-branded items.
$PEPE (@pepecoineth) launched on Ethereum in April 2023 as a joke coin. It has a fixed supply of 420.69 trillion tokens, according to Capital.com's market guide, which describes it as an ERC-20 token created by anonymous developers.
Furie has never been involved with the memecoin. The token's website states it has "no association with Matt Furie or his creation, Pepe the Frog."
The distinction matters for investors. PEPE is built on a popular meme, but it is not an official product of the character's creator, and the token itself has no stated utility. As with other memecoins, its value depends largely on liquidity, community attention and speculative demand.
The story shows how internet culture, intellectual property and crypto markets can overlap. A character drawn for a small comic in 2005 now has a market-traded token carrying its name, while the artist behind it continues to keep his distance.
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