Pepe (CRYPTO: PEPE) surged 17% Monday, leading memecoin gainers and outpacing Dogecoin’s (CRYPTO: DOGE) 4% rally as trading volume exploded 520% to $1.73 billion.
The Derivatives Setup
Open interest on PEPE futures climbed 11.56% to $228.54 million while 24-hour trading volume exploded 520.51% to $1.73 billion, signaling fresh money entering rather than just short covering.
Liquidation data showed $98,000 in short liquidations over four hours versus $327,000 in longs, suggesting the rally caught a significant portion of the short side offside while skeptics remained.
PEPE had been more aggressively sold than Dogecoin, setting up a cleaner derivatives squeeze when the macro tailwind arrived. The volume wave dwarfed PEPE’s 30-day average of 1.23 trillion tokens.
The Technical Picture
