Crypto News: Pepeto Presale Raises $11.29 Million Following Dogecoin's Path While Bitcoin Price Targets $250K Despite Crypto Crash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Pepeto just announced its presale has passed $11.29 million raised, with over 40,000 holders in. The number keeps climbing through a second straight week when most of crypto is in the red. The AI DeFi tools the team has been building are also in the last stage before going live. The idea behind the project is taking meme coins to the next level, with utility since day one.

On the other hand, at the moment of writing on 10 November, Bitcoin price has slid from above $80,800 last Wednesday to a two-month low of $73,708, and trades near $74,600 today. Here is what happened. Chip and AI stocks sold off hard on the Nasdaq, Bitcoin ETFs lost $1.28 billion in their worst week since June, and a jobs report of 165,000 against a 65,000 forecast pushed the odds of a December Fed hike near 80%, with the US inflation report due today. So the drop came from stocks and rates, not from anything wrong with Bitcoin. And there is good news sitting right next to it. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is still holding his Bitcoin price prediction of $250,000 within two years, and the drop has not changed his view at all.

Crypto News: Pepeto Raises $11.29 Million in a Falling Market, but Will Bitcoin Price Reach $250K Despite the Crypto Crash?

A project raising $11.29 million while the whole market is dropping is strange enough to stop on, because fear usually freezes presale money first, not last, and Pepeto is pulling it in faster than ever. We get to why in a moment. But first, the question everyone is asking: will Bitcoin price go back up? Here is what Hoskinson says. He told a crowd at TOKEN2049 that Bitcoin will reach $250,000 within 24 months, reported by Cryptonomist. His reason is a kind of buyer that did not exist before. AI agents are software that pays for things, buys data and trades on its own. They cannot open a bank account, so they need money that moves with no bank in the middle. Hoskinson thinks that pushes activity on the big chains up 10x to 100x once builders connect AI and crypto.

But here is a hidden truth about crypto: whale wallets control this market. When they expect a big move, the kind Hoskinson is calling, they push the price down first. They scare everyone out and buy the same coins far cheaper. Then the good news lands and the crowd buys back. By then the whales are already holding coins bought cheap at the bottom.

That is exactly what is playing out right now. A $6,000 slide in a week, over a billion dollars in longs wiped out, bad headlines everywhere. Yet the average price paid on coins moved in the last three months still sits in the mid-$70,000s, which means the whales are not selling into this. Retail sells, whales buy. And one of their favorite moves at this stage is presales, because even a 3x on Bitcoin over two years cannot touch what a new crypto does on listing day.

Pepeto Passes $11.29 Million as It Brings Back the 2020 Dogecoin Feeling With AI DeFi Tools Behind It

Which brings us to the announcement of the week. While Bitcoin price was losing $6,000 in a week, Pepeto's presale crossed $11.29 million. That number did not come from a bull market. It came from a week of red screens, forced liquidations and fear everywhere. A presale is not a coin you trade. It is money people put into a project before it exists on any exchange, the way early investors back a company before it goes public.

So $11.29 million raised in this market means something. Over 40,000 people looked at Pepeto, treated it like a business worth funding, and put real money behind it while everything else was falling. That is a different kind of signal from a meme coin pumping on a good day.

What they are funding is a planned AI DeFi ecosystem set to launch: An exchange with zero trading fees on Ethereum, the chain with the highest fees in crypto. A bridge that moves tokens between chains in under a minute for $0 plus gas. And a scanner that runs 42 AI checks on a contract before a trader buys it. The project confirmed this week that those tools are nearly complete, and that update has made Pepeto the most watched presale on the market.

Dogecoin is the coin most traders bring up when a meme coin starts pulling in this kind of money. Back in March 2020 it traded near $0.002 and had no product behind it, just a crowd that spread it through memes with no ads. Later that year Elon Musk started posting about it as the whole market went into a bull run. Fourteen months after that March price, $1,000 in Dogecoin was worth about $365,000.

Pepeto sits at $0.0000001905 at its current stage, and its name keeps showing up in crypto feeds with no ads behind it either. A rumor linking Elon Musk to the project has been going around for a few weeks now, and neither side has confirmed it. But look at why the rumor makes sense. Musk is the biggest name in AI today, the man behind xAI and Grok, and the person the whole industry watches when AI comes up.

Pepeto runs AI across its exchange, its bridge and its token scanner, so it is exactly the kind of project he would notice. The traders watching the presale point to those facts when they explain why they expect the token to be a success once it lists.

Conclusion

So what do you do when the Bitcoin price drops like this? Based on everything above, there is nothing to panic about. The whales are not selling, and Hoskinson is still holding his $250,000 Bitcoin price prediction, so the smart move is to do what the big wallets do: hold on and wait it out while everyone else panics.

Also keep in mind that big coins move slowly, maybe 2x or 3x on a good run, which is why even whales put part of their money into early projects that still have room to grow.

Seen that way, diversifying a portfolio with a new crypto buy such as Pepeto makes a lot of sense. A presale that just crossed $11.29 million by selling out stage after stage in a red market is a clear sign smart money is already in. And the project itself, zero-fee trading, a cross-chain bridge and AI security, looks stronger than most meme coins that ever made it to a listing.

For more information about Pepeto (PEPETO): Website: Official Pepeto Website

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MEDIA CONTACT

Contact: Dani Bonocci

Email: info@pepeto.io

Website: https://pepetocoin.com/

Phone: +971586738991