Memetic power is the ability of an idea to spread from individual to individual, evolving and growing stronger along the way. Memes do not have to be digital or images, but memes that are widely shared, understood, and recognized have more memetic power and value within communities. Being digital and visual therefore helps.

Pepe, the frog, is one of the most potent internet memes. Pepe has proliferated the web and is used across crypto and social media. While you’ll recognize Pepe, you may not know that he has a long history, an engaged audience, and started the crypto NFT art scene.

Rare Pepe: Series 1, Card 1 ‘Rarepepe’ aka Nakamoto Card.

Pepe started as a character in artist Matt Furie’s comics and book The Night Riders. Eventually, he was appropriated into the culture of 4chan, a controversial website renowned for being a melting-pot of the best and worst aspects of human culture.

Through 4chan, Pepe evolved through ‘feels good man’ memes and cultural conflicts that the community engaged in. You can go deeper into Pepe’s history in the Book of Kek, a great resource on Pepe’s evolution, and this article. For now, remember Pepe’s long history, audience, and evolution – the qualities of memetic power.

One of Furie’s original drawings minted on Ethereum.

The transformation of this power into currency happened when creators began minting and trading Pepe-based NFTs, unwittingly starting the crypto art scene. Pepe NFTs were minted on Bitcoin and predate all Ethereum NFTs, including Crypto Punks. The Nakamoto card shown above is card number 1, in series 1 of the Rare Pepe collection, which makes it highly valuable.

Today there is a curated collection of 1,774 community-produced Rare Pepe NFTs, many having more than one copy. Aside from the original curator (who closed the collection in April 2018), the collection has no leader, nothing ‘official’ about it, and is probably the most decentralized NFT collection available. Maybe for this reason some NFTs in this collection have sold for up to ~$350,000.

The collection and individual NFTs get value from a combination of age, rarity, and ‘dankness’. The older the NFT is, the rarer it’s perceived to be, rarity also comes not from algorithmic traits but total supply. Finally, ‘dankness’ refers to the NFT’s memetic power – the extent to which it relates to culturally significant people and events.

NFTs produced after the Rare Pepe collection must apply to become part of a second curated collection: the Fake Rares. While newer, they remain pretty valuable, ranging in price from ~$100 to ~$40,000. Gems are available for scooping in both collections.

What makes the collections worthwhile is that they transcend crypto. Owning Rare or Fake Rare Pepes is a bet on internet culture, rather than just crypto culture, making it less risky due to a larger potential market for selling at a profit later. 

Pepes are paid for mainly in Bitcoin, so a purchase is also a bet on continued $BTC adoption. The upside of this is that Pepes provide some hedging against any potential failure of an Ethereum-based NFT market, as unlikely as that seems. 

Overall, I believe there is a strong case for any serious collector of crypto art to have some Pepes in their collection. Many Rare and Fake Rare Pepes can be considered to be undervalued at this time.

As a side note, beyond the Fake Rares lie the Fake Commons and Dank Rares. Fake Commons are failed applicants to the Fake Rares collection and are the least valuable. Dank Rares are curated by Dankboost, a community artist, and have sold for up to ~$10,000. Overall, demand for these collections is generally lower, making them riskier investments while Rares and Fake Rares are available.

To add Pepe NFTs to your portfolio, head to pepe.wtf, the website where all the collections are reliably cataloged and originals can be purchased. At the top left of the screen, you’ll see the following buttons:

The Not Rare Pepes button will give you access to the Fake Rares collection, while Drops allow you to see the latest NFTs being added to any of the three Not Rare Pepe collections. I’ll be using the Fake Rares collection.

The Fake Rares screen will show the range of cards available, along with some drop-down menus allowing you to view various series of cards within the collection and sort by supply and other factors. To the top left of the screen is another drop-down menu that allows you to display the collection in other ways. Click on it and select Assets.

You’ll now get more information and sorting options for each card, allowing you to focus on the aspects that matter most to you. I’m going to choose ‘Supply’ to focus on the rarest cards, then look for low floor prices. Scanning down the list, I quite like the look of Peposession.

A convenient buy button on the page makes the purchase relatively simple. This will buy the NFT using $BTC and store it in a wallet on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

Rare Pepes can also be purchased on OpenSea on Ethereum. The pepe.wtf site will link to the relevant OpenSea page, providing a safe and familiar way to purchase using $ETH. The cards are listed as ‘Emblem Vaults’.

Emblem Vaults are used to wrap assets from one blockchain and use them on another, such as Ethereum. Think of them as wBTC or wETH. For each wBTC on Ethereum, one real BTC should be locked on the Bitcoin blockchain that can be reclaimed. Each Pepe NFT on Ethereum should have an original locked on Bitcoin.

There is nothing wrong with this, except there are imposter cards in Emblem Vaults on OpenSea that are hard to tell from the real thing. Therefore, use pepe.wtf as I’m showing you to ensure you’re purchasing part of the actual collection.

Back to our purchase on pepe.wtf. Clicking on the ‘Buy Floor’ button will open up the below screen on xchain.io. Firstly, note the send and receive amounts in green below the QR code; this means the selected NFT is available.

Next, notice the ‘Give Remaining’ field (zoomed-in below), which shows a value of 46. This means that there are 46 of the NFTs remaining. Finally, note the status of ‘Open’ at the bottom of the image. 

Along with the green send and receive info below the QR code, the screen shows that if you send 0.0075 BTC, you will receive 1 Peposession NFT, and there are 46 available. If the number available is low, for example 1, someone else could send a transaction to buy the NFT at the same time as you, and whoever’s transaction gets processed first gets the NFT, while both senders pay.

These are not smart contracts like Ethereum’s. There is no failsafe that returns user funds if the transaction can’t be completed! They are referred to as ‘dispensers’. Think of them as vending machines that multiple people can use simultaneously. 

The purchase can be made using any wallet on Bitcoin. The process is similar to using Metamask. However, I’ll show you how to use Rare Pepe Wallet, a wallet on the Bitcoin network. 

When you first open the website, you’ll be greeted with a new seed phrase for the wallet. Write it down, taking precautions to store the seed phrase safely as you would with any other. Once done, click continue, and your wallet will open.

Don’t worry, this seed phrase doesn’t contain any funds. 😉

At the top of the screen, as seen below is the wallets Bitcoin address. Some $BTC will need to be sent to here to buy the NFT from the dispenser. The easiest way to fund the wallet is to use an exchange such as Binance or Kraken.

Before withdrawing, take note of the price of your chosen NFT, and add a small amount of $BTC to the withdrawal to cover the cost of a few transactions. The wallet shows recommended transaction fees, which you can use as a guide. 

Once your funds have left the exchange, you’ll see a red notification dot at the wallet’s top left. This shows your deposit has been picked up on the Bitcoin network and is in the process of being completed.

Once the wallet is funded, your BTC balance will be visible by clicking on the banknote icon at the top left of the screen.

To make the purchase, click on the Bitcoin icon, and the window below will open. All we need to do is enter the receiver’s address and the send amount in the appropriate fields.

The receiver’s address can be copied and pasted from the dispenser, just above the QR code shown below. The send amount is below the QR code, this too can be copied and pasted.

Once done, click send, and the transaction will begin. Another red dot notification will appear in the wallet, and when completed, you’ll be able to see your Rare Pepe in the wallet by clicking on the ‘Show My Rare Pepes’ button below your wallet address on the main screen.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. There is a world of NFTs beyond Ethereum. In the case of Rare Pepes, they’re very significant to the crypto art movement and can be worth collecting. If you choose to collect some, come and share them in our Discord, and well done. 

While many people within crypto use Metamask with Ethereum-compatible chains, not many use the Bitcoin network to buy NFTs; with this tutorial, you just separated yourself from the herd.