Prominent Ethereum NFT Collection Pudgy penguins has seen a price increase of more than 40% this week, hitting a new all-time high above $62,000 amid a crypto rally that pushed Bitcoin above $100,000 for the first time late Wednesday.
The collection, which consists of 8,888 NFT profile photos (PFPs) of penguins, previously it had an all-time record price of just over $57,000 that it took place in February 2024, according to data from NFT Price Floor. A collection’s floor price refers to the lowest asset price offered for sale on a secondary marketplace.
The meteoric rise for Penguins is accompanied by a notable increase in rock-bottom prices for other top collections, namely shipping prices higher for large collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club And CryptoPunkswhich have increased by 69% and 31% respectively.
Pudgy Penguins went from a failing project to a notable crypto-native IP led by Luca Netz, who took over the project from its founders in 2022. Since then, Pudgy Penguins has launched toy lines at retail giants like Walmart and Target and has found great success. significant social media following, while also expanding into NFT gaming.
In July, Netz said on the WSH Podcast that he “bets on himself,” suggesting that Penguins would reach a price floor of 200 ETH during this cycle – over $780,000 at the current Ethereum price.
From the current floor price of 15.82 ETH, Penguins would need to rise by more than 12x to reach Netz’s target. For reference, the Bored Ape Yacht Club peaked at a rock bottom price of approximately $429,000 (152 ETH) in April 2022, at the end of the original NFT bull run, but has since fallen to a price of approximately $83,500 (21.5 ETH) at the time of writing.
The rise in rock-bottom prices for Pudgy Penguins and other top collections has contributed to the total NFT market cap nearly $9 billionaccording to CoinGecko.
NFT trading activity on the Ethereum blockchain also surged, more than doubling in the past week to more than $101 million in trading volume, according to data from CryptoSlam. The trading activities were largely concentrated in the large collections such as Pudgy Penguins, Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, which together were responsible for 40% of the weekly volume.
The increased activity and rising rock bottom prices over the past week have also led to more excitement among members of the NFT community on prices.
“NFTs are back,” marketplace OpenSea posted last week.
But even as sentiment improves, most major collections remain far from their all-time highs, and overall trading volume still pales in comparison to late 2021 and early 2022 figures. The market routinely produced daily trading volumes of more than $100 million back . Than, according to Sealaunch data.
NFTsor non-fungible tokens, are assets that have unique attributes and properties and cannot be exchanged for an identical item, such as in the case of Bitcoin, a fungible token.
Edited by Andrew Hayward