Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) Token Falls 35% as Airdrop Claims Trigger Selloff

PENGU, the newly launched token from the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection, went live today with an airdrop to eligible recipients. However, intense selling pressure caused the PENGU token price to drop by 35% shortly after its debut.

Within the first hour of trading, PENGU’s volume surged to $474 million. Here’s what to know about the launch, exchange listings, and how the market is responding to the airdrop.

PENGU Launch Sees Massive Selling Pressure

Some weeks back, the Pudgy Pengu team disclosed that it would launch a token before the year ends. This left the broader market guessing when that would take place. But yesterday, December 16, Binance disclosed that the crypto exchange would make the PENGU token available for spot trading today.

This development sparked excitement around the crypto community as the PENGU token launched and airdropped some of its supply to the community. Specifically, PENGU launched with a total supply of 88.88 billion tokens. 

Of this, 25.9% was allocated to the Pudgy Penguins NFT community, while another 22% has been reserved for the Solana and Ethereum communities. The Pudgy Penguins project team has been granted 17%, subject to a one-year cliff and three-year vesting period. Additionally, 12.35% is allocated to liquidity pools.

Pudgy Penguins Token Market Cap. Source: CoinGecko

However, unlike recent Binance listings, which have driven several token prices up, PENGU’s market cap has declined from $4.32 billion to $3.07 billion at the time of writing.

The token’s price has also fallen from $0.068 to $0.043. According to Nansen, this decline in value could be linked to rising selling pressure from the airdrop recipients.

As seen below, the volume sold since the cryptocurrency’s launch clearly outweighs the number of transactions that involved buying it. Should selling pressure intensify, the altcoin’s price could decline much lower than $0.043.

Pudgy Penguins Token Transactions. Source: Nansen

Pudgy Penguins Floor Price Follows the Token Direction

Prior to today’s PENGU airdrop and token launch, Pudgy Penguins’ NFT floor price reached an all-time high of 34.80 ETH, which is worth over $100,000.

This made the project one of the most expensive NFT collections. However, in the last 24 hours, the floor price has decreased 43.60% while trading at 18.50 ETH.

Pudgy Penguins NFT Floor Price. Source: CoinGecko

Meanwhile, Lookonchain revealed that some traders profited from the PENGU token price. One trader, for example, bought $5.36 million worth of the token and sold it for $13.72 million within just 20 minutes. 

However, such rapid gains may be unlikely to repeat in the short term, with the cryptocurrency’s price expected to continue its downward slide potentially, especially as another exchange, OKX, has listed it.