rarepepe.cloud
An editorial archive · est. 2026

Bitcoin's first NFTs, documented properly.

Before NFTs had a name, a small group on a Telegram chat made the first ones. This site collects what's been documented about Rare Pepes from primary sources: interviews with the people who built it, contemporary writing from inside the community, and the technical record from the Counterparty protocol itself.

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May 14, 2026 · 9 min read · History

The 2016 Origin of Rare Pepes

How an anonymous trader named Mike, a Counterparty Telegram chat, and a developer named Joe Looney built every component of an NFT before the term existed. The first Rare Pepe was a Satoshi Nakamoto card minted in early September 2016. Within two months the community had a custom currency, a verification system, and a marketplace.

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2026-04-08 · 7 min

Joe Looney and the Rare Pepe Wallet

The mechanical engineer who built the first cryptoart marketplace, took no commission, and shipped features in 2016 that NFT platforms re-discovered five years later.

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About

This site is built on primary sources. Where claims about Rare Pepes appear in this archive, they're traceable to a named interview, a contemporary article, or the Counterparty protocol record itself. New entries get published when the research is finished, not on a content calendar.

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