Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU Token Crashes 59.9% Amid Airdrop Farming Allegations

The PENGU token —the much-anticipated token from the Pudgy Penguin collection— went through a rollercoaster this week shortly before crashing

The much-anticipated PENGU token from the Pudgy Penguin collection experienced a rollercoaster ride this week, crashing on major exchanges shortly after its launch.

According to data, the token experienced a sharp drop of over 50% following its airdrop to Pudgy Penguins NFT holders. The token initially spiked to US$0.068 (AU$0.11), but its value quickly plummeted to US$0.031 (AU$0.047) amid significant selling pressure.

At launch, PENGU had a market capitalisation of US$2.3B (AU$3.63B) and generated over US$90M (AU$142M) in trading volume. However, that figure is now less than US$1.7B (AU$2.69B) as the coin is down 59.9% in the last 24 hours.

The PENGU token’s troubles don’t end there. There was also a steep drop in Pudgy Penguins’ NFT floor price, which fell from 33 ETH to 16 ETH. As the floor price went down, so did the token’s price.

The downturn is significant, especially considering that Pudgy Penguins, which was recently ranked as the second-largest NFT collection by market cap, is now back to third place. Meanwhile, the Bored Ape Yacht Club regained its position as the second-largest collection, with a floor price of 18.89 ETH, according to CoinGecko data.

Major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Bybit and KuCoin, listed PENGU for spot trading during its debut, which helped drive initial trading volumes.

However, data from DexScreener showed a sharp contrast in sellers vs buyers, with sellers massively outnumbering buyers on exchanges. According to the platform, there were over 111,000 sellers compared to 59,000 buyers, which intensified the downward price pressure.

Moving on, data from on-chain platform Lookonchain, shared on X, revealed what many of us already suspected — that airdrop farmers snipped rewards using multiple wallets, waited for the token generation event, and immediately sold the tokens afterwards for a quick profit.

One notable example involved a trader who purchased 5.3 million PENGU tokens and sold them within 20 minutes, earning a total of US$13.7M (AU$21.6M). Either airdrop farmers quickly capitalised on the event, or there is insider trading (or both, who knows).