Is MiniPepe a Scam?

Following the rapid rise of PEPE in May this year, a memecoin that originated from the cartoon character "Pepe the Frog" created by comics artist Matt Furie, a new memecoin project, MiniPepe, has recently gained attention.

Generally speaking, meme refers to a type of online culture, which can be emoticons, meme images, and jokes that are popular and spread like wildfire on the Internet, while memecoins have no intrinsic value or specific purpose, and are usually promoted on social media to attract users. As DOGE, a dog-themed memecoin, has gradually been accepted and has jumped to the top 10 in crypto market capitalization, memecoins have begun to rise. PEPE, as a dark horse this year, has created a new wave of boom in the crypto industry.

With a new boom comes new hype, which will inevitably be exploited by scammers to drain investors' money. A lot of skepticism was raised around MiniPepe, which has come under fire from users lately, is it a scam to chase PEPE's clout?

About MiniPepe

Like Pepe, MiniPepe also claims to be the most memeable memecoin in existence, has no connection to Matt Furie and his creations, has no intrinsic value, and is only for entertainment purposes. Its exact rollout date is unclear, but its official Twitter(now X) account was created in May 2023, just a month following PEPE's launch.

MiniPepe, whose token name is MINI PEPE, is a BEP-20 token issued on Binance Smart Chain, under the ticker symbol $MINIPEPE, with a total supply of 420,690,000,000,000.

MiniPepe is currently in the first phase of its rough roadmap, with a pre-sale price of 0.00000001BUSD, and has raised 816.93BNB as of this writing. MiniPepe has completed its airdrop and is opening up tokens for unlocking. According to MiniPepe, it will go live on CEXs(centralized exchanges) one after another in September.

However, can the tokens be successfully unlocked?

While MiniPepe's airdrops appear to be legitimate, with most users claiming airdropped tokens, a lot of users currently do not know how to unlock the tokens, with many of them saying the project is a scam. Some users also said that it is not possible to swap the tokens on PancakeSwap, a DEX (decentralized exchange) built on Binance Smart Chain. A "token swap"  refers to the direct exchange of one crypto token to another on the DEX.

Others asked how to unlock tokens on Binance, which left a few users confused, but some said that they did get airdrops through Binance DeFi Wallet. They seem to have decided that MiniPepe is a scam.

There are also users who have shown screenshots of the high-risk alert they encountered when they performed the token unlock.

Besides, a user claimed that MiniPepe is just trying to raise money and then run away, why force unlocking before the deadline if they are giving out airdrops for free?

Is MiniPepe credible?

In the process of collecting user reviews, we found people linking MiniPepe to another crypto project, AI Trader, claiming that they are the same group of scammers. AI Trader is an AI-related cryptocurrency launched this year, which is also in the token unlocking phase and is not yet circulating in the market or listed on an exchange.

AI Trader claims to be launching its own mainnet, but some users pointed out that it is a scam and will not be launching a mainnet at all and its tokens will not be listed on an exchange. Users also reported that they are unable to unlock AIT (AI Trader's token name), which is indeed similar to the problems others have encountered with MiniPepe, triggering questions about MiniPepe's credibility.

A user asked why the cryptocurrency exchanges didn't release a statement of cooperation. It's clear that some users don't believe that MINI PEPE will actually be listed on exchanges.

BNB Chain's Warning

On August 17th, BNB Chain tweeted a risk warning that its Web3 dApp hub, DappBay, has put MiniPepe on its Red Alarm list, arguing that MiniPepe is likely to forge legitimate dApps and websites (most likely Pepe) for phishing.

Now that BNB Chain has issued an official warning, we have to beware that MiniPepe is likely to create an airdrop scam for phishing, which may result in investors' crypto wallets being emptied of assets.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrencies are known to be very volatile, and crypto project rugpulls are common. The implosions happened frequently in the crypto space over the past year or so, and crypto with a market cap ranking top may collapse overnight, let alone a memecoin that has no intrinsic value and mimics a well-known token.

Given the problems most users are having unlocking and swapping tokens, concerns around a potential scam, and BNB Chain's warning against MiniPepe, we strongly advise investors to exercise caution with MiniPepe and preferably not to buy its tokens during the pre-sale period. MiniPepe has very little credibility, it is most likely a scam and will not necessarily be listed on cryptocurrency spot exchanges in the future.