Arkham has attributed almost 3% of PEPE’s supply to wallets linked to Justin Sun. The estimate combines known and predicted addresses, while the transfers behind it establish withdrawals rather than a verified purchase price or a plan to sell.
Summary
- Arkham estimated Sun-linked PEPE holdings at 2.82% of supply on October 27.
- The attributed position was worth approximately $51.25 million at that snapshot.
- Two reported Poloniex withdrawals totaled 11.85 trillion PEPE.
- The withdrawals were valued at a combined $48.76 million when recorded.
- A $0.000001 price change would alter an 11.85 trillion token position’s quoted value by $11.85 million.
Arkham Intelligence has estimated that wallets linked to Justin Sun held 2.82% of PEPE’s supply, worth approximately $51.25 million at its October 27 snapshot.
Arkham’s assessment combines addresses it identifies as Sun’s official wallets with addresses it predicts belong to him, making wallet attribution part of the calculation itself.
The tokens arrived over the preceding 10 days, according to the analytics firm. Two large withdrawals from Poloniex account for most of the reported position, but the transfers do not identify the price at which the tokens were originally purchased.
The estimate identifies a large group of tokens in attributed wallets without announcing a decision to sell them.
Justin Sun’s PEPE estimate includes predicted wallets
As crypto.news previously reported, Arkham’s Sun-linked wallet holdings made him the largest individual PEPE holder under the firm’s attribution. Exchange addresses were excluded from that description because their balances can represent tokens belonging to many customers.
Arkham’s address page for one of the wallets displays the label “Justin Sun?” Arkham uses the question-mark designation for a predicted owner.
An address balance and a beneficial-owner identity are different records. The blockchain can record a transfer between addresses without recording the legal identity of the person who ultimately owns the assets.
The description “largest individual holder” consequently depends on Arkham’s grouping of the wallets. It should not be read as a complete ranking of every undisclosed person or entity with exposure to PEPE.
The firm’s October 27 estimate is a dated snapshot. A later change in token price can change its dollar value without changing the number of tokens, while a wallet transfer can change the address distribution without changing the owner.
The $51.25 million figure should therefore retain its date even if the 2.82% estimate is repeated later. Applying a historical dollar valuation to a live chart would combine two different market observations.
Arkham introduced its entity predictions in October 2023 as a lower-confidence category than its verified labels. Users can submit information supporting or disputing an attribution, which means a predicted label is open to revision.
The platform later added a dedicated predictions tab so users could view the addresses its model associated with an entity. The separation is part of Arkham’s own product design, rather than a qualification imposed on an otherwise verified ownership record.
Its tagging guide distinguishes an entity, a label and a tag. An entity groups addresses under an owner or organization, a label identifies a particular address, and a tag describes activity associated with it.
A wallet can therefore carry a behavioral description without that tag proving who owns it. Conversely, an entity estimate can combine several addresses even when no single wallet holds the entire position attributed to that person.
For the PEPE estimate, excluding predicted wallets would change the scope of the calculation. Arkham’s headline figure includes them, so presenting it as a total held only in publicly confirmed wallets would describe a different dataset.
The firm’s documentation says its identification process draws on on-chain behavior and off-chain information, including public records and social media. It does not turn the address label into a signed acknowledgment from the person named.
The attribution is still useful for tracking a specified group of addresses over time. If an address moves tokens, observers can follow the movement while retaining the distinction between the transaction itself and the identity assigned to its sender.
Two withdrawals explain the reported concentration
Coverage of Arkham’s findings identifies a withdrawal of approximately 7.2 trillion PEPE from Poloniex on October 17 and another 4.65 trillion on October 26. The transfers were valued at $28.44 million and $20.32 million respectively.
Adding the token quantities gives 11.85 trillion PEPE. Adding the reported transfer values gives $48.76 million.
The second withdrawal was smaller in token terms, but its implied valuation per token was higher. Dividing $28.44 million by 7.2 trillion gives approximately $0.00000395, while $20.32 million divided by 4.65 trillion gives approximately $0.00000437.
The latter is approximately 10.6% above the former. These are implied valuations from rounded transfer figures, not verified trade executions or evidence that Sun paid either price.
A withdrawal moves tokens from an exchange to an address. The purchase could have happened earlier, in several trades or under an arrangement that is not visible in the withdrawal transaction.
The two withdrawal values cannot be treated as a documented cost basis. Subtracting them from a subsequent market valuation would measure a change from withdrawal-time values, not a verified investment profit.
The first withdrawal accounts for approximately 60.8% of the combined token quantity, with the second accounting for 39.2%. Those percentages use 7.2 trillion and 4.65 trillion divided by their 11.85 trillion total.
Weighting the reported dollar values by the combined token count produces approximately $0.000004115 per token. It is a blended withdrawal-time valuation, useful for reproducing the reported totals without assuming that either withdrawal represents a new market purchase.
The later $51.25 million estimate covers the attributed position across wallets, while $48.76 million describes the two large transfers at receipt. Comparing those amounts without aligning the quantities and times can produce a misleading profit calculation.
Moving tokens through an exchange creates another gap in the public trail. The blockchain identifies deposits and withdrawals, but the trades executed inside an exchange’s customer ledger are not individually recorded as Ethereum transfers.
A transfer from Binance to Poloniex and a subsequent withdrawal from Poloniex can be traced as movements. They do not, on their own, establish that the same beneficial owner purchased the tokens at both venues or that each transfer represents another round of buying.
Counting every leg as demand would count a journey through several wallets as several acquisitions. The token quantity arriving at the destination is a cleaner measure of the resulting address balance than adding the dollar value of every intermediate movement.
Token quantities give a clearer measure of price exposure
For the 11.85 trillion tokens in the two reported withdrawals, each $0.000001 change in PEPE’s price changes the position’s quoted value by $11.85 million. The calculation multiplies the token quantity by the change in price.
At a hypothetical $0.000004, the same quantity would be worth $47.4 million. At $0.000005 it would be worth $59.25 million, and at $0.000006 it would be worth $71.1 million.
These are scenarios using a fixed token count. They do not assume the attributed wallets still hold that exact quantity and do not predict where PEPE will trade.
A sale would introduce a separate variable, the price actually available for the amount being offered. Multiplying every token by the last traded price gives a quoted portfolio value without establishing that the entire position could be sold at that price.
The calculation can be reversed for part of the position. One tenth of 11.85 trillion is 1.185 trillion tokens, which would have a quoted value of $5.925 million at a hypothetical $0.000005.
The actual proceeds would depend on execution prices and costs. Without a dated order-book or pool-liquidity record, the size of any resulting price movement cannot be calculated from the wallet balance alone.
The exposure is symmetrical in dollar terms for equal price changes. A move down by $0.000001 reduces the fixed position’s quoted value by the same $11.85 million that an equal upward move would add.
Selling a large PEPE position depends on the buyers available
Coinbase’s order-book guide explains how an order is filled against available prices and quantities. A market order can consume the nearest bids and continue at lower prices when selling demand exceeds the quantity buyers offer at the top of the book.
For an illustrative sale of 1.185 trillion PEPE, suppose buyers offer to take 300 billion at $0.0000050, 400 billion at $0.0000049 and 485 billion at $0.0000048. Those quantities total exactly one tenth of the two reported withdrawals.
The three portions would produce $1.5 million, $1.96 million and $2.328 million before fees. Total proceeds would be $5.788 million, approximately $137,000 below valuing every token at $0.0000050.
The weighted average execution price would be approximately $0.000004884. The 2.31% difference from the top price comes entirely from the hypothetical bids used in this example, not an observed PEPE order book.
A larger headline market capitalization would not change that arithmetic. Market capitalization multiplies a reference price by supply; the proceeds in the example depend on buyers offering specific amounts at specific prices.
Coinbase’s order-type documentation describes limit orders and time-weighted average price orders as different execution methods. A sell limit sets a minimum accepted price, while a time-weighted order divides the intended trade across scheduled executions.
Neither method guarantees that a large position will be sold in full at the original reference price. A limit can remain unfilled, and later portions of a scheduled order encounter the market available when they reach it.
There is no disclosed execution instruction for the Sun-linked PEPE. The examples explain what a future transaction would have to accomplish without asserting that the holder has placed such an order.
The same quantity can encounter a different result on a decentralized exchange. Uniswap’s swap documentation says price impact depends on how much liquidity is available at the prices crossed by a trade.
Under the simple constant-product model described in its protocol guide, a pool with reserves x and y prices a swap by preserving their product before accounting for fees. Selling more of one asset changes both the reserve ratio and the average rate received.
For a simplified pool holding 10 trillion PEPE and $50 million, the starting reserve ratio is $0.000005 per token. Selling 1.185 trillion tokens into it, with fees ignored, would return approximately $5.297 million under the constant-product formula.
The calculation is $50 million multiplied by 1.185 trillion divided by 11.185 trillion. Compared with a $5.925 million valuation at the starting reserve ratio, the average proceeds are approximately 10.6% lower.
This is a model, not an estimate of PEPE’s actual decentralized liquidity. Modern concentrated-liquidity pools allocate capital across chosen price ranges, so their usable depth cannot be inferred by applying a single full-range reserve example to every pool.
Uniswap’s pricing documentation separately describes how a minimum output can restrict execution when market conditions change. The order’s own price impact and a price change before execution are different sources of a worse outcome.
Its explanation of transaction-ordering risks notes that a visible pending swap can attract other trades around it. No such activity has been established for the reported withdrawals, which are transfers rather than identified decentralized sales.
Exchange flows describe movement, not trading intent
The publication’s October 28 PEPE market activity coverage cited Santiment data showing 4.77 trillion tokens leaving exchanges on October 16. It reported that 2.11 trillion returned between October 19 and October 22.
Using those reported quantities, the subsequent inflow reversed approximately 44.2% of the earlier decline. The difference between the two movements is 2.66 trillion PEPE, although the dates cover different windows and cannot establish that the same tokens traveled in both directions.
The partial reversal gives a more complete account than describing the first outflow in isolation. Exchange balances were not moving in only one direction across the entire period.
A withdrawal can accompany a decision to hold assets away from an exchange, but it can accompany custody changes or transfers between a person’s own accounts. A deposit can make tokens available for exchange trading without proving a sale has happened.
For a Sun-linked address, a transfer back to a labeled exchange would consequently establish a new movement. It would not establish an executed disposal until there was further evidence of the trade or an attributable disclosure.
The distinction applies to other large holders too. A transaction tracker’s suggestion that a deposit is “likely to sell” is an interpretation of the destination, not a completed-sale record.
Futures exposure cannot be added to a wallet balance
The October 28 market report cited CoinGlass figures showing approximately $316.14 million in PEPE open interest and $587.89 million in futures trading volume. They were separate measures at that report’s cutoff, not current October 30 readings.
Open interest measures outstanding derivatives exposure, while volume measures trading over a period. A spot wallet balance measures tokens held at an address.
Adding those figures would not produce a useful total of money invested in PEPE. The same market participant can hold spot tokens and trade futures, and a contract’s notional value is different from the cash posted to support it.
A rise in open interest does not identify a bullish position on its own. Futures contracts have both long and short sides, and new exposure can include hedges against spot holdings.
There is no disclosed hedge in the wallet attribution itself. It would be equally unsupported to assume Sun has no hedge simply because an on-chain address shows PEPE.
Perpetual-futures funding provides another measure of positioning, but it needs its own timestamp. Bybit’s funding documentation describes payments between long and short holders, with the direction determined by the funding rate.
At a hypothetical positive rate of 0.01%, a $10 million position would owe $1,000 for one funding interval. A holder maintaining the position across three identical intervals would pay $3,000, before considering price changes, fees or a different rate at the next interval.
The example explains why a derivatives position can carry a continuing cost that a token balance does not show. It is not a claim about the funding rate charged on PEPE when Arkham published its estimate.
An investor could hold tokens and sell futures against them, producing a spot balance that remains visible while the derivative changes the investor’s net exposure. The wallet alone does not disclose the size, venue or even the existence of that hedge.
The opposite can happen when a trader holds little spot PEPE but takes a large leveraged long. A holder ranking would miss the derivative entirely even though its liquidation could later generate forced trades.
For that reason, the $51.25 million wallet estimate cannot be read as a complete measure of one person’s economic exposure. It describes the attributed on-chain position at the stated valuation, not a consolidated portfolio including exchange accounts and derivatives.
The constructive interpretation of the October withdrawals is that a substantial quantity was moved into wallets attributed to a holder willing to retain it outside the exchanges. The opposing interpretation is that concentrated holdings leave a quantity that could return to the market, a concern Canary raises in its own discussion of large holders.
Neither interpretation supplies a sale timetable. A later deposit or disposal would add evidence to the second case, while continued balances would establish that the attributed addresses had not distributed those tokens during the observed period.
The ETF filing represents a separate possible route to demand
Canary Capital’s original PEPE application proposed a spot exchange-traded product holding the token. Its application is separate from Sun’s attributed wallets and does not establish a connection between the two developments.
The firm subsequently filed an October registration amendment. SEC records identify the submission as Form S-1/A, filed October 2 under accession number 0001999371-26-022017.
The amended prospectus describes a proposed product. A registration amendment is not an announcement that shares are trading or evidence that an operating fund has bought PEPE.
The filing can be followed through later regulatory and issuer disclosures. It cannot be converted into an assumed inflow figure, and there is no basis for adding hypothetical ETF purchases to the wallet holdings.
The initial application discussed concentration among the largest addresses, including a January snapshot in which the top 10 held approximately 41% of supply. Address concentration is not the same as concentration among 10 individuals, since a custody address can hold assets for many customers.
The January figure is historical. It cannot establish the present distribution after the October withdrawals or show whether any particular customer’s holdings were already included within an exchange address.
The fund structure would give investors exposure through a security, with custody and expenses administered under its offering documents. It would not transfer the authority to control Sun-linked wallets to the fund or change who can authorize transactions from those addresses.
For retail investors, the SEC’s ETF bulletin distinguishes buying shares on an exchange from dealing directly with a fund. A trade in an existing share does not by itself demonstrate a new acquisition of the underlying asset.
A PEPE product’s actual token demand would depend on its operating creation and redemption arrangements and changes in holdings after launch. A listing announcement, if one occurs, would establish a different milestone from the registration amendment discussed here.
The token’s own website describes PEPE as a memecoin without intrinsic value or an expectation of financial return. It gives no contractual claim on a company’s revenue or assets that could be used to value an individual token like a conventional equity share.
That description leaves the price dependent on what buyers and sellers are prepared to exchange for it. A prominent holder’s presence can become part of market attention without creating a promise by that person to support the price.
A wallet is not a support order. Even when a holder has enough capital to buy more, a balance disclosure does not obligate them to do so at any particular level or after a decline.
The 2.82% estimate can be checked against the token supply
PEPE’s website lists a supply of 420.69 trillion tokens. Dividing the two reported withdrawals, 11.85 trillion, by that quantity gives approximately 2.817%, which rounds to Arkham’s 2.82% estimate.
One percentage point of that listed supply is 4.2069 trillion tokens. The October 17 withdrawal of 7.2 trillion represents approximately 1.71% of the listed supply, while the October 26 withdrawal of 4.65 trillion represents approximately 1.11%.
The calculation explains why the token quantities and the rounded percentage are consistent. It does not independently establish which person owns either destination or whether balances have changed since the snapshot.
The 2.82% figure is a share of token supply, not a share of liquidity available at one exchange. Buyers and sellers can quote prices for a much smaller portion of supply at a time, and the same tokens can trade repeatedly during a day.
For a fixed 420.69 trillion supply, a $0.000001 movement in the reference price changes the calculated token market capitalization by $420.69 million. The fixed 11.85 trillion-token position changes by $11.85 million under the same assumption.
The first quantity is approximately 35.5 times the second, consistent with a holding close to 2.82% of supply. Neither change requires that hundreds of millions of dollars actually enter or leave an exchange; both are valuation calculations applying a new price to an existing quantity.
Trading volume poses a different question. A market can record $100 million of activity through repeated trades between participants without adding $100 million of new outstanding token value or creating bids for a $100 million one-time sale.
The relevant denominators therefore differ. Supply is appropriate for a concentration percentage, while a particular order’s expected proceeds require the prices and quantities available through its execution route.
Ethereum’s ERC-20 documentation provides the underlying distinction between balance records, transfers and allowances. A balance records tokens at an address, while an allowance grants a specified spender permission to transfer tokens under the contract’s rules.
Granting that permission does not itself establish that a sale has occurred. A subsequent use of the allowance, a transfer to an exchange or an executed swap supplies a different kind of transaction evidence.
The same distinction prevents a change in an address label from being mistaken for a token movement. An analytics provider can revise its identification of a wallet without the underlying token contract recording a new transfer.
Arkham’s other identified address displays the name Justin Sun with the descriptive label “trypoly” on Polymarket. The name attached to that address and the predicted label on E5991 are separate entries within the combined attribution.
Earlier PEPE transfers involved a different set of events
In August 2023, the project’s official account described an unauthorized transfer of 16 trillion tokens to exchanges, an episode covered in the publication’s earlier PEPE transfer coverage.
The project’s official account said the tokens had been transferred without authorization. The August 2023 episode concerned project-linked wallets, while Arkham’s October 2026 analysis concerns withdrawals to addresses it attributes to Sun.
What to watch
Wallet attribution: An explanation from Arkham or a confirmed owner could strengthen or change the identity assessment.
Token balances: Changes in quantities establish movement independently of changes in dollar valuation.
Exchange destinations: A new deposit would add a dated transaction to the record, without automatically proving a sale.
Dated derivatives data: Funding, open interest and liquidations need matching timestamps before comparison.
ETF status: An effective registration, listing notice and actual holdings would establish developments beyond an application.
FAQ
Does Justin Sun definitely own 2.82% of PEPE?
Arkham estimated 2.82% across official and predicted wallets. The attribution does not independently establish beneficial ownership of every included address.
How many tokens were in the two withdrawals?
The reported 7.2 trillion and 4.65 trillion withdrawals total 11.85 trillion PEPE. They were valued at a combined $48.76 million when recorded.
Did Sun pay $48.76 million for the tokens?
The $48.76 million figure is the combined reported value at withdrawal. It does not establish purchase prices or a verified cost basis.
What happens to the position if PEPE rises by $0.000001?
A fixed 11.85 trillion token position would gain $11.85 million in quoted value. The same price decline would reduce its quoted value by an equal amount.
Does a deposit to an exchange prove a sale?
No. Even a transfer of 1.185 trillion tokens, one tenth of the reported withdrawal quantity, would establish movement without identifying a completed trade.
Can open interest be compared directly with the spot holding?
The October 28 report’s $316.14 million open-interest figure measures derivatives exposure. It is not the same as a wallet’s token balance or cash invested.
Has the PEPE ETF filing established inflows?
No. The October 2 S-1/A is a registration amendment for a proposed product, not proof of an operating fund or completed PEPE purchases.
Is the $51.25 million valuation current?
It is the value associated with Arkham’s October 27 snapshot. A later price or balance change requires a new valuation. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of October 30, 2026.
