A newsletter sent out to Coinbase customers on Wednesday, May 10th, sparked outrage among the Pepe community. In an email, authors described the Pepe meme as a "hate symbol" co-opted by alt-right groups. A prominent crypto Twitter influencer Borovik.eth shared a related screenshot with his 96,000 followers.
Wait, what is that league even, and why refer to it?
"The ADL is an international Jewish non-governmental organization that aims to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of hate and bigotry.
In 2016, the ADL added “Pepe the Frog” to its database of hate symbols, stating that the character had been appropriated by white supremacist groups and used to spread hate and bigotry online. While the character was originally created as a harmless meme, it has since been co-opted by extremist groups and used to promote hateful ideologies." – Bitcoinist.
Fans and holders of the hugely hyped memecoin expressed their outrage at such a token description, resulting in calls for Coinbase to issue an apology. Some users even threatened to delete their accounts at the crypto exchange.
Since the tweet above, $PEPE fans have sent the #deletecoinbase hashtag trending on Twitter.
Things were moving quickly, and at the time of writing, there are more than 70,000 tweets with that hashtag, and it continues to grow, so it looks and feels like a real revolt from the memecoin supporters' army.
Many have started to close their Coinbase accounts, indeed, flocking to Gemini instead.
Coinbase shares, meanwhile, tanked – rather under the pressure of other market factors, although Pepe fans were happy to put it to their credit.
The next day, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges considered it better to apologize to the PEPE community and remove the controversial judgment in the post on their site.
A small episode for the bigger crypto market, but it feels like a big win for the emerging PEPE community.
"#Pepe is the future," they say. Ok. But is there a future for the $Pepe? What do you think?
