In April 2023, a mystery trader made a bold move. With just $27 (0.013 ETH) in his wallet, he bought 2.51 trillion $PEPE tokens at a tiny price of $0.00000001080 per coin. At that time, PEPE was just another meme coin with a market cap of only $2 million—a risky bet.

But things took a wild turn. His crypto wallet was blacklisted, making his tokens completely frozen and unsellable.

A Twist of Fate

As if that wasn’t enough, the man ended up in jail for four months after getting into a bar fight. While he was locked up, the crypto world exploded. PEPE coin skyrocketed from a market cap of $2 million to over $1 billion by May 2023, later peaking at $1.6 billion. Early buyers made millions, and the coin was even listed on Binance and other major exchanges.