In brief
- The Dogecoin Millionaire is now the Pepe Millionaire, after he swapped all of his Ethereum holdings for the meme coin earlier this year.
- Glauber Contessoto rose to crypto notoriety in 2021 when his Dogecoin holdings surpassed $1 million.
- Now, he’s looking to also become a meme coin millionaire with Brett and Floki.
Glauber Contessoto rose to crypto fame in 2021 when he became what was believed to be the first “Dogecoin Millionaire”—a title he wore proudly. Now, four years later, he’s claimed the title of “Pepe Millionaire,” while his DOGE stash has dipped slightly below that milestone level.
Across six wallets shared and verified with Decrypt, Contessoto now owns approximately $1.116 million of the Ethereum meme coin PEPE.
This is in addition to his Dogecoin stash that he has become famous for. Contessoto claims to own “a little bit over” 5 million DOGE which would put him in the ballpark of $920,000 at today’s price. DOGE is down nearly 12% over the last month. And yes, he still hasn’t sold any Dogecoin—despite saying he would.
Contessoto said that he bought $100,000 worth of three meme coins back in spring 2024: Pepe, Brett, and Dogwifhat. Both Pepe and Brett have increased in value since then, to his excitement, while Dogwifhat is down 82% from its all-time high reached during that period.
Then, this February, Contessoto said he rage-quit holding Ethereum (ETH) due to its poor price performance during the prior months, and swapped all of his tokens for Pepe.
“[It was] hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he laughed. “I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I sold out all of my ETH, completely sold everything, and put it all into Pepe.”
With Pepe’s price rising 36.96% since the end of February, this was enough to hail Contessoto as a millionaire in his second meme coin. But, why Pepe?
“I think Pepe is probably one of the only other memes that are up there with Doge in terms of how recognizable they are,” Contessoto told Decrypt. “Even if you don’t know the name Pepe, you’ve seen the face of Pepe. You’ve seen it on some forum somewhere, in a meme on Facebook, obviously on Twitter, Reddit. Pepe just has such an iconic reach.”
Plus, he likes that Pepe is more of an edgy meme, especially when compared to his darling Dogecoin, which is rooted in family-friendly, wholesome love. After all, a common mantra among DOGE supporters is “Do Only Good Everyday.” Ultimately, the Pepe Millionaire said, the meme represents internet culture at its deepest and darkest.
Pepe the Frog was originally created by artist Matt Furie, as part of his comic series “Boy’s Club” in 2005. But by 2016, the Anti-Defamation League added the frog to its database of hate symbols, alongside logos like the swastika. This is because it had been adopted by the alt-right movement with anti-Semitic and racist versions of the meme spreading across 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit.
“Pepe is never supposed to represent that in the first place,” Contessoto said. “They took it and did what they wanted with it—but that doesn’t make the meme itself bad.”
In the 2020 documentary “Feels Good Man,” Furie attempts to fight against his work being used as a symbol for hate through a string of copyright infringement lawsuits, which he mostly loses. One major victory, however, was the frog being used as a symbol for hope by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong—which Furie loved.
“Pepe to [the whole world] is recognizable,” the Pepe Millionaire added. “You got Pepe in all different languages.”
Contessoto isn’t looking to stop there. Instead he wants to become a millionaire in meme coins Brett and Floki too—both of which he says he also invested $100,000 into. Being a meme coin millionaire across multiple tokens wasn’t the original aim, he said, but now he’s embraced the goal.
“It’s just kind of fun,” he said. “It’s my thing, I guess.”
At this point, it’s only natural to question where the Dogecoin Millionaire is getting his capital from, especially considering he never sold his DOGE fortunes. Contessoto explained that when he rose to crypto fame in 2021, he was making $10,000 a month on YouTube while also working a job doing voiceovers for music publication HipHopDX.
“I just kind of took that whole momentum I had in 2021 and tried to make as much money as I could,” he told Decrypt. “With that, I had YouTube money, I had merch money, and then I had a lot of stuff just with the documentary that was happening too. I was getting speaking engagements and we were doing showings of the documentary at different locations—they paid me for that.”
Since then, he’s also become somewhat of a social media influencer that sells sponsored posts, and has been paid to run marketing campaigns for other projects.
Deploying capital is the easy part, he said—selling is the real challenge.
Contessoto has held onto his Dogecoin fortunes ever since his first purchase, claiming to have never sold a single penny. Previously, in November, he told Decrypt that he planned to start selling off DOGE when he believed Bitcoin was reaching its peak.
Bitcoin has since hit multiple all-time high peaks, including most recently in May, but he still didn’t sell as he believes it still isn’t the right time.
Will he make the same mistake again and hold his DOGE even further below the $1 million mark?
“No, bro, trust me, I will [sell],” Contessoto asserted. “I’m not going past 2025 without selling at least half of my Dogecoin. […] I’m not round-tripping shit ever again. It’s not worth it, man—not worth it at all, bro.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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