The proud owner of My Little Pepe, alias American Pegasus, told the Daily Dot, "Only one of these exist, and it belongs to a tier of the rarest pepes of all - uniques with only a single card issued."
"But that Pepe wasn't listed for sale in Counterparty," American Pegasus continued. "Instead the seller only would accept cold hard Pepecash. A million of them to be exact. And so I'm darn glad I had some handy, and was able to score the trade."
We're a long way from Good Boy Points now. The Rare Pepe economy is based on real money, and PepeCash is starting to take off. A recent price jump seems to have been triggered by a January Vice article and an article Wednesday in France's Le Monde that introduced Rare Pepe Wallets to a new group of meme fanatics.
Unlike most other digital currencies, this one is tied to the enthusiasm for an underlying product: Pepes. Even though you don't need PepeCash to buy Pepes, Pepe enthusiast find it nice to own for a number of reasons.
"Pepecash offers a fun and abstract way to value Rare Pepes apart from their underlying Counterparty value," American Pegasus explained. "As we know, with money, the value is in the utility. There are several exciting Pepecash-only features being planned, such as an entire exchange based off Pepecash and a Pepestarter crowdfunding platform. Ultimately it's best for the Pepeverse to have a highly liquid asset like this that can act as a base token for all things Pepe."
No matter how much money you dump into Rare Pepes, though, you'll never own them all. There are a handful of one-of-a-kind Pepes, and some of their owners may have lost the passphrases to their Pepe wallets or may never sell their precious rares.
Regardless of how formal and secure the Rare Pepe Economy gets, though, it wouldn't be Pepe without a little trolling. Cryptocurrency blog Bitcoinist calls Rare Pepe Wallet "a satirical indictment of the altcoin markets," especially the novelty digital currencies that are either jokes or shabby get-rich-quick schemes. Remember Dogecoin, the currency named after a Shiba Inu dog meme?
"In what can be seen as a satirical jab at this growing [altcoin] culture, Rare Pepes create a metaphorical representation of the pump and dump absurdity and legitimizes it through the use of the Bitcoin blockchain’s immutability," Bitcoinist's Ryan Strauss wrote in November.
The people trading Rare Pepes and PepeCash don't see them as just another flash-in-the-pan alternative currency, though.
Dogecoin, for example, was just a rebranded Bitcoin running on the same technology. PepeCash is different because of its connection to the Rare Pepe cards themselves, which are fun to collect and desirable to meme aficionados on their own terms.
"I deeply believe that it is a lot more interesting as Dogecoin, which was only a currency," Bates told the Daily Dot. "This is not just a currency. It is Blockchain driven meme assets you really can own. It is also helping to develop Counterparty, the protocol that is used to create and trade these assets."
On the Rare Pepe Traders group chat, there's plenty of excitement about the PepeCash boom, but it's also clear that the traders and card creators have a passion for the meme.
"With pepetrading there are several things coming together as an extra: Memepower, Curiosity, Human nature of collecting all sorts of stuff, Hope for profit, Community, Interest in Blockchain Technology and above all - the lust to make fun about everything and everybody," Bates wrote. "It's the mix of it all."
One Rare Pepe designer, Nymity Nymz, told Le Monde, "I think these are just the beginnings of an industry," and said it's even possible he could live on his Pepes someday.
Nymz, who described himself to RarePepeNews.com as a "Rapper, Ghost writer, FinTech Guru," also told the site that the reason he creates Rare Pepes is "for 2020."
A Rare Pepe, he said, "is something that has the potential to outlive us all."