A rare Pepe or RarePepe is a variation on the "
Pepe the Frog
Pepe the Frog () is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called ''Boy's Club''. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspa ...
"
internet meme, itself based on a character created by
Matt Furie
Pepe the Frog () is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called ''Boy's Club''. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across My ...
. The related Rare Pepe crypto project, created by various artists worldwide between 2016 and 2018, was based on the aforementioned meme and traded as
non-fungible token
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...
s (NFTs) recorded on the
CounterParty
A counterparty (sometimes contraparty) is a legal entity, unincorporated entity, or collection of entities to which an exposure of financial risk may exist. The word became widely used in the 1980s, particularly at the time of the Basel I deliberat ...
platform. A total of 1,774 official cards were released for the project across 36 series.
On October 26, 2021, a rare Pepe, ''PEPENOPOULOS'', sold at a
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
auction for $3.6m USD.
Pepe the Frog
Pepe the Frog is a cartoon green
anthropomorphic frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" ''Triadobatrachus'' is ...
with a
humanoid body. The character originated in the 2005 Matt Furie comic ''Boy's Club'',
and became an
Internet meme in 2008, popularised through
Myspace,
Gaia Online
Gaia Online is an English-language, anime-themed social networking and forums-based website with Chibi-style animations. It was founded as go-gaia on February 18, 2003, by Derek Liu, Long Vo, Josh Gainsbrugh, and the name was changed to GaiaOn ...
and
4chan. In the 2010s, the character's image was appropriated as a symbol of the
alt-right movement, and by
white supremacists
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
. The
Anti-Defamation League included Pepe in its hate symbol database in 2016, but said most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context.
History
In 2015, a subset of Pepe memes began to be referred to as 'rare Pepes', with watermarks such as "RARE PEPE DO NOT SAVE", generally meaning that the artist had not previously posted the meme publicly.
In April 2015, a collection of rare Pepes were listed on
eBay
eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...
where it reached a price of $99,166 before being removed from the site.
In September 2016, the very first rare Pepes were mined in block 428919 on
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
, pre-dating popular
Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capita ...
based
NFT
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the ...
s. A
Telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
chat group dedicated to discussing the
Counterparty
A counterparty (sometimes contraparty) is a legal entity, unincorporated entity, or collection of entities to which an exposure of financial risk may exist. The word became widely used in the 1980s, particularly at the time of the Basel I deliberat ...
NFT was created shortly after. By 2017, a community had grown around the digital
collectable
A collectable (collectible or collector's item) is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector. Collectable items are not necessarily monetarily valuable or uncommon. There are numerous types of collectables and terms ...
s,
spurring developers to build platforms for the purpose of cataloging and exchanging these unique images, thereby creating the first
crypto art
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...
market in 2016.
On January 13, 2018 a live auction of rare Pepes took place in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, including one based on
Homer Simpson which sold for $38,500, watched by representatives of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
,
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, and
Sotheby's Institute of Art
Sotheby's Institute of Art is a private, for-profit institution of higher education devoted to the study of art and its markets with campuses in London, New York City and online. The institute offers full-time accredited master's degrees as wel ...
in the audience. The buyer sold it three years later for $312,000.
In March 2022, a buyer who spent $537,084 on a rare Pepe filed a lawsuit claiming fraudulent misrepresentation, alleging that only one copy was to be sold whereas 46 copies were subsequently given away, devaluing his investment.
Trading platforms
Two components, created simultaneously, both support each other to enable interaction and asset exchange among both contributors and market participants:
* "Rare Pepe Wallet" is a web-based, encrypted wallet developed to allow users to buy, sell, and store rare Pepes using a medium of exchange called PepeCash.
The backbone of the Rare Pepe Wallet is the Counterparty platform, which is built upon the
bitcoin network
The bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer payment network that operates on a cryptographic protocol. Users send and receive bitcoins, the units of currency, by broadcasting digitally-signed messages to the network using bitcoin cryptocurren ...
.
* "Rare Pepe Directory" was a directory built to catalog all known rare Pepes, with specific guidelines for submitting the images for inclusion. The Rare Pepe Foundation removed any offensive images that are submitted before they became visible.
Crypto artists used these resources to publish their work as digital tokens with a fixed circulation
and then issued the art to collectors who then sold, traded, or stored their collections.
Collectors use the 'Rare Pepe Blockchain Trading' channel on the
Telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
instant messaging platform to discuss with other collectors.
See also
*
CryptoKitties
''CryptoKitties'' is a blockchain game on Ethereum developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs, a company spun-off from Axiom Zen, that allows players to purchase, collect, breed and sell virtual cats. It is one of the earliest attempts to deploy bloc ...
*
CryptoPunks
*
Bored Ape
Bored Ape Yacht Club, often colloquially called Bored Apes, Bored Ape or BAYC, is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection built on the Ethereum blockchain. The collection features profile pictures of cartoon apes that are procedurally generated b ...
*
EtherRock
*
List of most expensive non-fungible tokens
This is a list of the highest known prices possibly paid for non-fungible token
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used ...
*
Meme coin
A meme coin (also spelled memecoin) is a cryptocurrency that originated from an Internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic. It may be used in the broadest sense as a critique of the cryptocurrency market in its entirety—those based ...
*
Trading card#Digital trading cards
References
{{reflist
External links
Rare Pepe DirectoryRare Pepe Wallet
Non-fungible token
Blockchain art
Digital art
2010s in Internet culture
Frogs in art
Blockchain and auctions