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The Pudgy Penguins token, PENGU, started trading on Binance, charting the first hours of its price history. The listing arrived with increased volatility, as traders complained of technical problems.
Binance was one of the first major exchanges to list the new Pudgy Penguin token, PENGU. However, users reported errors that turned into costly trading losses.
Binance listed PENGU on December 16, at 14:00 UTC, but social media users noticed that for the first 30 minutes of trading, the token was displaying a $350M market capitalization. The real valuation of PENGU was actually $3.5B, which led to early traders reporting significant personal losses.
After the initial mistake, Binance worked with Coinmarketcap to display the correct data. At that time, DexScreener displayed the correct trading data.
In the initial trading period, PENGU quickly discovered its equilibrium price range. The token started at $0.0032, later rising by a factor of 10 to $0.032. PENGU has not seen any price pressure in either direction, instead relying on price discovery through its available trading pairs.
PENGU is still heavily traded through Raydium, rivaling its Binance activity. Other centralized exchanges listed the asset immediately, but they remain illiquid and only carry a small share of trading activity.
In the past day, PENGU achieved $2.16B in trading volumes, with a turnover of 111.2% of the available supply, signaling a relatively high demand for scarce tokens.
The token has more than 70% of its supply unlocked at this stage, with various groups of airdrop recipients. Holding PENGU is incentivized for governance, special perks, and access within the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem. For short-term holders, PENGU may also be a speculative bid, as some airdrops have achieved significant gains soon after launching.
PENGU smart contract was leaked early
The Binance listing information for PENGU also contained the token’s smart contract. In a later version, Binance deleted the actual token address, waiting for the team announcement and wider listings.
For a brief period, Binance displayed the token’s smart contract, potentially allowing bots to snipe the token.
Later, the token contract was widely available on its Solana profile page. The information was important for early traders, as PENGU started trading alongside multiple spoofed tokens with similar names or tickers.
Early trading for PENGU was also extremely risky, especially for those placing decentralized orders. The early data information led to unrealistic valuations, and some orders were filled at the wrong price through illiquid pools.
During early trading, PENGU orders were filled at a price as high as $0.70, wiping out the portfolio of early traders. High volatility is not unusual for newly launched tokens. However, the high profile and expectations for PENGU exacerbated the problem, leading to traders being wiped out within seconds.
Binance has reportedly decided on an additional airdrop of 135M PENGU to all affected traders to compensate for their early trading losses. However, the airdrop will not compensate those who logged losses through DEX swaps.
Pudgy Penguins collection crashes after airdrop
The PENGU token airdrop served as an accelerating factor for the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection. Airdrop seekers traded the NFT, lifting the price floor to over $100K.
Pudgy Penguins contains only 8,888 items and is still the third most valuable NFT collection. However, the price floor crashed within hours of the airdrop announcement. The collection’s floor price crashed from a peak near 35 ETH down to 15 ETH. During the period of hype, some sellers liquidated their holdings at peak valuation. Others logged losses, as they bought too close to the top.
Pudgy Penguins reached its all-time high in 2024, far surpassing its performance from the previous NFT boom. However, once the token is launched, the collection will have to find new sources of interest. The brand remains strong, but the performance of PENGU will be closely watched for signs of success or failure.
The Pudgy Penguins brand managed to survive the NFT bear market by looking beyond crypto. The NFT tech was used for real-world products, making Pudgy Penguins one of the few projects with mass adoption and physical sales.
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