Today, we’re talking about PENGU, the Pudgy Penguins token which launched a few days ago on the 17th. Presently, we are looking at a market capitalization of 1.9 billion and a fully diluted valuation of 2.7 billion, including a team supply that’s vested for 3 years. However, it hasn’t performed exactly like everyone thought it would. I’ve seen lots of people say this was the worst trade in the last three years.

I literally made a video saying that if you can get in below a billion market cap, it would be really good. That kind of forecast, I feel, helped in not getting too many newbies burned, we can see with really no movement, maybe even lower.

What I can make out, it was simply way too high-the hype was too much right from the beginning. That is always what happens whenever there is an overhyped drop; it crashes right from the very start. All of the airdrop recipients sell instantly, and they’re out. The problem is, those airdrop recipients are usually the ones that would keep the price up, since they also hold the NFT.

A lot of people were watching the airdrop claim percentage-we’re at 88% now, which is close to that 90% mark everyone was waiting for. But here’s the thing: if 88% of people have already claimed their PENGU, and that was supposed to be the main selling pressure, why isn’t the price going up? It probably means the market isn’t really feeling the token right now, or maybe everyone’s just distracted with Christmas.

One thing that has caught my attention, looking at the data, is that 75% of the top holders-those are the people who own the most NFTs, got the biggest airdrops-they’ve sold their entire allocation. Only two of the top holders remain holding their PENGU. That’s not very telling.

I myself stayed aside because it never reached my target entry price, but I will probably buy it soon. I still think that we can go x2 from here, maybe up to 3-3.2 billion market cap, but I think we might need to see it drop first around 1.6 billion first.

One issue I want to point out is the way they did the airdrop distribution. They gave tokens to OG ETH users and ETH Diamond hands, and I get wanting to make it a community thing, but you got to question this strategy. Look at people holding Pudgy Penguins for months-some who bought in at 2 ETH when Luke Belmar got involved; these are the people that actually believed in the vision. Why not give them a more significant share instead of some random ETH users who probably don’t care even a bit about the ecosystem?

Compare this to what Hyperliquid did: they mainly rewarded people who actually held assets on their platform, not traders, because they knew holders were more likely to keep the token long-term.

But look, with all these issues, I still think this is a solid project. The team is better than most NFT teams, they’re generating revenue, and that 3-year vesting shows they’re thinking long-term. Make sure to drop your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to join our Discord. If you want my best DexSceener filters to find 100X’s, check the link in the description.