An email sent to Coinbase customers that described the Pepe meme as a “hate symbol” co-opted by alt-right groups sparked outrage in the PEPE memecoin community.
Prominent cryptocurrency influencer Borovik.eth shared screenshots of an email newsletter to his 96,000 followers on May 10, citing a 2016 decision by the Anti-Defamation League to include frog-themed characters in its online hate symbol database. Fans and holders of the frog- themed memecoin were outraged by the depiction of the coin, sparking calls for an apology from Coinbase and users starting to delete their accounts with the cryptocurrency exchange.
Pseudonymous Twitter user and solidity developer Kenobi declared that Pepe was not a symbol of hate, so he would be moving the funds to US-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, tagging his tweet: “#deletecoinbase”. According to Tweetbinder, the hashtag "#delete coinbase " has climbed to the top of Twitter with more than 14,000 tweets and counting in the past two hours.
Since Binance listed the token for trading on May 5, Pepe holding members of Crypto witter have been asking leaders of multiple cryptocurrency exchanges to list the token as well. Coinbase has not made it clear whether it intends to list Pepe tokens on its exchange. App arently , Gemini CEO Cameron Winkelvoss is listening, and on May 9, the Winklevoss-owned cryptocurrency exchange listed the memecoin for trading and gave a more open description of the new coin.
Pepe's price fell 2.6 percent in the hours after Coinbase's description circulated on Twitter. At press time, Pepe is trading at $0.00000184, down 10.4 percent over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
