The story of Pepe the Frog and his creator Matt Furie is one of the most notorious in all the meme world. After going from harmless comic to simple meme to “symbol of hate speech” and nearly everything in-between, Pepe is one of the most storied internet culture characters of all time, so it’s no surprise that it cashed in on the NFT craze.

In April, Furie auctioned off a digital token of his original comic depicting Pepe alongside his iconic catchphrase “Feels Good Man” on the crypto art platform OpenSea. Ultimately, the winner, a user by the name of punk4156, walked away with the NFT for the price of 420 ETH, or about $1 million at the time.

7 minutes left and @punk4156 gone ape with a million dollar bid on the Matt Furie 🐸 pic.twitter.com/uoS3Qppx85

— Beanie.eth (@beaniemaxi) April 17, 2021

Following the auction, punk4156 told Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, “It’s my view that this will eventually be one of the most valuable digital originals in the world,” and that it “should rightfully be our generation’s Mona Lisa.”

With such a historic sale, becoming the single highest-selling meme NFT to date, Furie has now unveiled his plans to “reclaim” his iconic character through additional NFTs in the form of “PEGZ” — digital artworks of his Boys Club characters in the style of pogs.

According to an interview with the Washington Post, Furie’s cousin, an artist named Frank Muara, introduced him to the world of crypto art with the idea that it would be a means to reclaim Pepe. “The NFT space allowed him to claim something that was his,” Musarra told WaPo. “This is something that has evaded him for years, and this was a powerful thing.”

In his interview, Furie also told WaPo that he saw Pepe-related NFTs as a way to regain some ownership of his creation that’s gone on to inspire countless memes over the years. “The NFT world is new, and there are a lot of optimistic people creating cool things,” Furie said. “Pepe does not have the baggage here that he does in the 'real world,’ and I like working with utopians and optimistic freethinkers. There are so many possibilities.”

Maybe a good time to mention that I intend to fractionalize this piece when the time is right, returning a meaningful % of ownership to @Matt_Furie. There is no more appropriate piece in the world for fractionalization – the 'Feels Good' Pepe should be owned by all of us.

— 4156 (@punk4156) May 31, 2021

Since Pepe entered the meme scene way back in 2008, the renowned frog has gone through many ups and downs, and Furie has attempted to reclaim ownership of it several times, usually with less than successful outcomes.

Last year’s Feels Good Man documentary, which covered the extensive history of Pepe and his creator, included moments like when Furie attempted to “kill off Pepe” in the mid-2010s after becoming fed up with the meme’s association with the alt-right. Due to this, there have naturally been some to point out the irony that he’s now cashing in on its fame while doing a 180.

Furie later said that the rollout of PEGZ on the marketplace Chain/Saw was just the beginning, so it seems the creator has more up his creative sleeve for digital art in the near future.