Martin is the original Pepe. $Pepe is technically a beta of Martin, martin is the original inspiration behind Pepe. I don't believe this has been found before. Matt Furie who is the creator of $PEPE posted multiple pictures of Martin (The Geico Gecko) back in 2005 on his my space page, these are the first posts ever on his page I searched all news coverage from that time period and found a news article from 2008 in which Martin was named the original inspiration to pepe There is probably other mentions and probably even tweets from that time period mentioning the same News Article - Matt Furie's My Space Page