Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU token down more than 50% after launch

Pudgy Penguins’ native token, PENGU, is down more than 50% in the first hours of trading after the non-fungible token (NFT) project’s much-anticipated Dec. 17 airdrop. 

The project has distributed approximately half of PENGU’s total supply of nearly 89 billion tokens to community members, with around 26% earmarked for NFT holders, according to Pudgy Penguins’ website. 

Initially debuting at a market capitalization of around $2.8 billion, the PENGU token, which trades on Solana, has since dropped to a market cap of less than $2 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. 

The Pudgy Penguins team has not announced a specific use case for PENGU tokens, but they are expected to play a role in the project’s governance, according to Bybit. 

Related: Pudgy Penguins CEO unfazed by SEC actions against NFT sector

Lucrative NFT collections

Launched in 2021, Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 NFTs, each representing a unique image of the brand’s iconic penguins. 

The project has since launched other NFTs, including Lil’ Pudgys — a collection of 22,000 baby penguins — and Pudgy Rods, which depict penguin-themed fishing rods. 

Holders of any of these NFTs are eligible to claim PENGU by demonstrating proof of ownership on the Ethereum network, the Pudgy Penguins team said.

According to OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, the floor price for a Pudgy Penguin NFT as of Dec. 17 is more than 16 Ether (ETH), or approximately $64,000. The NFTs are distributed among nearly 5,000 unique wallets. 

They traded at a floor price of nearly 36 ETH shortly before PENGU’s debut, according to OpenSea.

Meanwhile, Lil’ Pudgys and Pudgy Rods are currently trading at floor prices of around 1.7 ETH and 0.7 ETH, respectively, according to OpenSea. 

Pudgy Penguins has also sold 1.5 million Pudgy-branded toys in retail stores such as Walmart, according to Pudgy Penguins’ website. 

Pudgy Penguins are the priciest NFTs after CryptoPunks. Among the oldest NFT collections, CryptoPunks — a collection of 10,000 NFTs launched in 2017 — have traded for upward of $20 million per NFT. 

As of Dec. 17, several CryptoPunks NFTs are listed for around $170,000, according to CryptoPunks’ website.

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