Wall Street Pepe’s official X (formerly Twitter) account announced that staking rewards for the $WEPE coin will end on March 17, 2025. The update, posted just weeks after the token's launch, did not clearly explain the reasoning behind the decision.
This sudden change marks a sharp departure from initial promises of a multi-year staking program designed to offer long-term passive income to investors.
$WEPE Coins Staking Rewards Program and Presale Fundraising
Originally, the cryptocurrency project committed to a three-year $WEPE coin staking rewards program to provide ongoing incentives for long-term holders of $WEPE coins. According to the blockchain project whitepaper, 12% of the total token supply (24 billion tokens) was allocated to staking rewards.
The latest announcement suggests that the Wall Street Pepe crypto project may have allocated too many tokens during its presale, potentially leaving an insufficient supply to sustain staking rewards.
Unusual $WEPE Coin Valuation at Listing
The latest announcement is closely tied to broader concerns about Wall Street Pepe’s tokenomics and the crypto presale structure. Wall Street Pepe claims the crypto project raised $70 million from retail investors during its $WEPE coin presale stage. However, based on the project’s pricing model, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) at the exchange listing was only $42 million, calculated as 200 billion total tokens multiplied by $0.00021 (the actual listing price).
This creates an unusual scenario where presale crypto investors purchased tokens at a valuation exceeding the project's market worth at listing. Typically, early retail investors purchase digital tokens in crypto presales at a discounted price, reflecting the higher risk of investing before a project is fully developed. In contrast, Wall Street Pepe crypto’s fundraising structure suggests that retail investors effectively paid a premium, an approach rarely seen in token sales, initial coin offerings (ICOs), initial DEX offerings (IDOs), or early-stage crypto fundraising rounds.
The project's early changes to the $WEPE coin staking rewards leave cryptocurrency investors with unanswered questions, ones that will be worth watching in the coming months.
