Five anonymous wallets moved more than US$4,28 million to acquire 611 billion PEPE tokens
in just eight hours this Tuesday (16), triggering a 12% appreciation in the asset’s price, which jumped to US$0,00000775.
The movement was identified by the blockchain monitoring platform Lookonchain, which pointed to a possible connection between the wallets and Tornado Cash, a protocol known for being used in operations that seek to hide the origin of funds. According to the analysis, the wallets received ETH via Tornado Cash about 15 days before the PEPE purchases.
5 wallets spent $4.28M to buy 611B
$PEPE
in the past 8 hours.
All 5 wallets withdrew
$ ETH
from
#Tornado
~15 days ago—possibly linked to a hacker.
Are hackers buying
$PEPE
?
Address:
0x5D058264e34e27eE1b4f852216Dc4AFC7c320e25
0x53abA3F792d6c8097a7169C8916B1C3f7975f5ed…
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain)
April 16, 2025
Tornado Cash has a controversial history, being cited in several investigations into cyberattacks and illicit activities, which has raised concerns in the community about possible attempts at market manipulation or money laundering involving PEPE.
Among the transactions analyzed, one wallet alone moved more than $250 through the CoW Swap protocol, while other purchases ranged from $9 to $36. Following the acquisitions, PEPE’s trading volume skyrocketed, reaching $12,3 million when combining data from Binance and Uniswap.
Despite weeks of sideways movement on the chart, the token’s recent performance has rekindled the interest of investors and analysts. At the time of publication, the price of PEPE Coin was quoted at $0,000007121, up 1% in the last 24 hours.