The crypto world has once again shown its wild, unpredictable side with the explosive rise — and fall — of the POPE meme coin. Named after the head of the Catholic Church, this token surged to viral fame in recent days, catching fire on Crypto Twitter and drawing interest from major exchanges like Gate.io and MEXC, which quickly listed the token.
As hype drove the token’s price up thousands of percent within hours, its market cap reportedly spiked past $300 million — before crashing just as dramatically. Independent data aggregators like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap have either removed or never listed POPE, making it hard to verify current figures. CoinGecko confirmed it had delisted the coin from its platform.
The coin’s official site claims 35% of the total 1 billion supply is intended for the Catholic Church, with another 25% going to marketing and creators, and only 100 million tokens made available for public trading. The project describes itself as a tribute to future popes who embrace decentralization and cryptocurrency, boldly calling POPE “a meme coin so holy, it blesses every transaction.”
But not all transactions have been divinely blessed.
According to on-chain analysis by Lookonchain, one early insider reportedly made over $1 million in just two hours by selling off their POPE holdings into the hype. Meanwhile, a latecomer who jumped in during peak FOMO lost $111,000 in under five minutes, highlighting just how quickly fortunes can change in meme coin mania.
This incident is yet another reminder of the volatility — and risk — that comes with trending tokens in the meme coin arena.
