Pudgy Penguins’ Token Launch Proves Controversial

The PENGU token launched on Dec 18, leaving big winners and losers in its wake.

PENGU kicked off at a nearly $6 billion fully diluted valuation, 300% higher than its closest comparison, Apecoin (APE), which trades at a $1.5 billion valuation.

However, many users faced difficulties claiming their tokens for the first few hours, and some others who attempted to snipe tokens from the wrong liquidity pools ended up accidentally buying PENGU at a $14 trillion valuation, 300% more than the entire crypto market.

Between the selling pressure that usually comes with airdrop events, the high opening valuation, and the discontent from unsuccessful claimers, short sellers piled in on perpetual exchanges. On Hyperliquid, short funding rates spiked as high as 3100%, or nearly 10% per day.

PENGU proceeded to tumble nearly 60% before bottoming out at a $2.5 billion valuation and has since recovered by 30%.

Despite the volatility, Pudgy Penguin’s devout holders made life-changing money from the token airdrop. One supporter, Bright Avian, claimed 33 million PENGU tokens, currently worth $1.2 million.

Bright Avian posted on X and said, “Did not hold those cute arctic avians you all call @pudgypenguins for 3+ years to yeet this token day one. Study conviction! Congrats to everyone who took a win today too though; you deserve it!”

PENGU’s Impact on NFTs

The announcement of PENGU sparked a market-wide rally across Ethereum NFTs, but the market has corrected post-launch, with the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem taking the brunt of the beating.

Since the PENGU launch, Azuki is down 8%, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club is down 3%, while Pudgy Penguins are down 48% from their pre-TGE surge to 36 ETH. Pudgy Penguins are currently trading for 19 ETH, up 20% from yesterday’s low of 15.5 ETH.

The Pudgy Penguin ecosystem NFTs are still priced higher than when the project announced the PENGU token airdrop, as holders look ahead to the Abstract token launch.

Abstract is a Layer 1 blockchain co-developed and incubated by Igloo Inc., Pudgy Penguins’ parent company. It is presumed that Pudgy Penguin holders will also receive substantial allocations of the Abstract token airdrop.

Abstract’s mainnet is slated to launch in January 2025.