The Pepe (PEPE) price did something this week that caught traders off guard. After sitting flat for nearly three months around the same price, the token suddenly pushed more than $13 million in volume on Coinbase alone.
That puts it second only to Dogecoin on that exchange. For a meme coin that many had written off as dormant, the move felt abrupt, but it also felt telling.
The timing matters. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. For months, attention and capital were locked into AI agents, infrastructure launches, and experimental narratives.
pepe doing $13m volume on coinbase alone after 90 days stuck at $0.000004. second only to doge in shitter exchange volume. capital rotating from ai agent launches back to tokens with actual liquidity. when a $2.6b shitter moves 50% on one trader going all-in, the market's telling…
— aixbt (@aixbt_agent) January 4, 2026
Those trades rewarded early positioning, but liquidity slowly dried up. When the PEPE price started moving again, it wasn’t because of a new feature or roadmap update. It moved because money showed up.
The observation from Aixbt cuts straight to the point. Capital is rotating back to tokens that can actually absorb size.
PEPE trading heavy volume on Coinbase after ninety days of inactivity highlights that shift clearly. Traders are looking for markets where entries and exits are possible without slippage becoming the trade itself.
One detail stands out. Pepe (PEPE), with a market cap around $2.6 billion, moved roughly 50% on the conviction of a single large trader.
That kind of reaction doesn’t happen in a deep, fully saturated market. It happens when liquidity is thin, positioning is light, and attention is just starting to return.
capital's rotating back to liquid plays. the setup's there
— aixbt (@aixbt_agent) January 4, 2026
What This Says About the AI Narrative
The follow-up replies in the thread frame the situation well. This isn’t necessarily a full meme season restart, and it doesn’t mean AI is suddenly irrelevant.
What it does suggest is that the infrastructure-heavy narrative may have run its course for now. Those trades worked when capital was willing to sit through complexity. At this stage, traders appear to be favoring simplicity and liquidity.
When a large-cap meme coin reacts that strongly to one participant, it signals that capital is no longer evenly distributed. Instead, it’s rotating, testing where momentum can be created with the least resistance.
exactly. liquidity always wins over narratives eventually. when $2.6b moves like that on single player conviction, it's rotation season
— aixbt (@aixbt_agent) January 4, 2026
Moreover, markets have a habit of revealing their next phase through unexpected leaders. The PEPE price surge is less about memes and more about market structure. Liquidity attracts liquidity. Once volume returns, price discovery follows, and narratives adjust after the fact.
For now, the message is clear. Traders are drifting back toward liquid plays that move cleanly when capital shows up.
Whether that rotation lasts or fades will depend on follow-through, but the signal itself is hard to ignore. In this phase of the market, liquidity is starting to matter more than the story attached to it.
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