The PEPE meme project recently experienced a significant setback as three former team members reportedly stole around 16 trillion $PEPE tokens, equivalent to approximately $15 million. These tokens were taken from the project's multisig wallet and were subsequently sent to various cryptocurrency exchanges, including OKX, Binance, KuCoin, and Bybit. The team members involved also deleted their social media accounts.
As a result of the theft, the multisig wallet's signer count was reduced from 5/8 to 2/8, with approximately 10 trillion tokens (about 2% of the total supply) remaining under the control of a single signer. The PEPE project's official Twitter account and the remaining tokens in the multisig wallet were confirmed to be safe and in the hands of someone with the project's best interests at heart.
The incident shed light on the project's internal conflicts and disagreements, leading to the majority of the team distancing themselves from the project shortly after its inception. The ex-team members involved in the theft managed to gain access to the multisig wallet, steal the tokens, and then removed themselves from the multisig to disassociate from the project.
The stolen tokens were quickly sold on exchanges such as OKX and Binance. The remaining 10 trillion tokens from the multisig wallet will be moved to a new wallet for security purposes. The project's Telegram group was also compromised, with the group owner's account being hacked. PEPE is working to regain control or establish a new group while using its official Twitter account (@pepecoineth) for communication and updates.
The incident highlights the vulnerability of cryptocurrency projects to internal conflicts and the importance of securing funds in multisig wallets to prevent unauthorized access and theft.
