Zinger Key Points
- Pudgy Penguins recently celebrated its four year anniversary as an NFT collection.
- The NFT collection has turned into one of the most well-known NFT brands and the face of Web3.
- The market’s back, and these 3 income stocks are thriving. See them here→
NFT collection Pudgy Penguins celebrated its four-year anniversary recently. The NFT collection continues to be one of the biggest turnaround storylines in the NFT sector of all time.
With a cryptocurrency launched by the company, here's a look at how much investors could have made predicting the bottom before a recent huge surge in price action.
What Happened: Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 NFTs offering “good vibes” and “positivity for everyone.” The collection was minted on July 22, 2021, at a price of 0.03 Ethereum ETH/USD each.
The collection sold out quickly and saw the floor price rise and draw attention from the New York Times and other outlets as one of the faces of the rapid rise of NFT popularity in 2021.
Two subsequent collections also launched with free claims for holders with Pudgy Rods, originally misspelled as Pudgy Rogs, and Lil Pudgys later launching.
The discontent within the community caused a decline in the Pudgy Penguins floor price. Frustrated by the project's lackluster direction, the community voted to remove the founders from control.
In April 2022, entrepreneur Luca Netz bought Pudgy Penguins assets, the brand, company and more for 750 Ethereum, or around $2.5 million at the time.
The floor price jumped from a range of 0.7 Ethereum to 1.4 Ethereum to 2.5 Ethereum and beyond after Netz made the purchase. Optimism quickly spread, and the project appeared resurrected and brought back to life.
Years after taking over Pudgy Penguins, Netz was also part of the company launching the Pudgy Penguins Token PENGU/USD, a Solana SOL/USD based cryptocurrency.
The token was a claim for owners of various Pudgy Penguins NFTs and for several other communities.
Read Also: EXCLUSIVE: Why Luca Netz Fell In Love With Pudgy Penguins, What’s Next For NFTs
Investing $1,000 in PENGU: The Pudgy Penguins token was launched in December 2024 and quickly soared in price. The coin hit an all-time high of $0.05738 on Dec. 17, 2024.
Months later, the price slowly declined as investors took profit and attention faded away from the coin.
Loyal Pudgy Penguins NFT holders and crypto investors who recognized the strong community of Pudgy Penguins and its place in the NFT ecosystem may have bought PENGU in various dips in price as a long-term trade.
Those investors would be doing quite well depending on their purchase date.
In April 2025, PENGU hit its all-time low of $0.003715. An investor who bought $1,000 of the cryptocurrency at the time could have purchased 269,179.00 PENGU.
Today, that $1,000 investment would be worth $10,939.43 based on a price of $0.04064 for PENGU at the time of writing. This represents a return of 993.9% over the last three months from the all-time lows.
PENGU is up 28% over the last seven days, representing the top gainer of all the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The Pudgy Penguins token is currently ranked 43rd by market capitalization at $2.5 billion.
Why It's Important: Since taking over, Netz has pushed Pudgy Penguins further and evolved the brand into Igloo Inc, which includes several other projects. He also pushed the company into consumer products, a strategy that has benefitted holders who can collect licensing royalties.
Pudgy Penguins products have been found in stores like Walmart, Target, Five Below, Walgreens and online through Amazon.com.
With distribution in over 10,000 stores, the brand has sold millions of items.
Pudgy Penguins signed recent partnerships with brands like Scrub Daddy, PEZ and NASCAR. The company also teased that it has one of its largest partnerships ever coming in the fourth quarter of this year.
The company will be present at San Diego Comic Con, July 24 to July 27, where it looks to expand brand recognition for the well-known NFT collection to people outside of Web3.
On social media platform X, a recent surge in cryptocurrency companies changing their profile pictures to Pudgy Penguins recently occurred. The move saw some custom-designed Pudgy Penguins used as profile pictures to support the brand.
Even Fundstrat Capital Chief Investment Officer Tom Lee got in on the fun, changing his PFP on July 17.
Netz was a speaker at Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets events in 2022 and 2023, where he shared more about the future of the company.
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