Crypto investor earns $77 million from a $3,000 investment

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to greatly transform global financial systems, either by reconfiguring transaction mechanisms or serving as a new store of value. Despite the increasing institutional adoption and mainstream appeal in recent years, it is important to note that these factors are still in their early stages. The primary drivers in this new space are still speculative investments. While instances of traders turning small investments into significant wealth have become less common as the industry matures, they do still occur. Lately, most of these trades have been in meme coins, involving risky and short-term strategies.

However, playing the long game can still result in significant profits, as long as one knows what they are doing. In mid-April 2023, a trader purchased 4.91 trillion units of the meme coin Pepe (PEPE) by exchanging a variety of other coins and tokens worth a total of $3,000 at the time. At the time of writing, PEPE was trading at $0.00002513, an astonishing 8,276% increase from the $0.00000030 price when the trader acquired it.

Although meme coins like PEPE are not known for their stability, this trader has managed to steadily cash out on their initial investment, locking in millions of dollars in profit, with the potential for millions more. Here is how they did it.

On April 25, 2023, the trader exchanged 20,000 Liquidity Incentive Tokens (LIT) worth $2,256 at the time for 3,407,945,165,404 PEPE. Less than half an hour later, they sold 0.1 Ethereum (ETH) worth $210 at the time, for an additional 457,332,932,276 PEPE. Another fifteen minutes later, they exchanged 500 USD Coins (USDC) worth $499 for 1,048,914,082,342 PEPE.

In total, the trader spent $2,965 to acquire approximately 4.91 trillion units of PEPE, according to data from Etherscan. Since then, the trader has consistently been selling off their stake, selling roughly 3.03 trillion PEPE for a profit of $27.5 million.

On December 9, an additional 100 billion PEPE were sold, worth approximately $2.8 million at the time. This brings the trader’s realized gains to around $30.3 million. The trader still holds 1.88 trillion PEPE, which is valued at approximately $47,414,400. If this remaining stake were to be liquidated all at once at these prices, the trader’s total profit would reach $77.7 million.

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