Prominent Ethereum NFT collection Pudgy Penguins has seen a more than 40% price pump this week, notching a new all-time high of more than $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 penguin NFT profile pictures (PFPs), previously held an all-time high floor price of just more than $57,000 that it set in February 2024, according to data from NFT Price Floor. The floor price of a collection refers to the lowest asset price listed for sale on a secondary marketplace.
The swift flight higher for Penguins comes alongside a notable increase in floor prices for other top collections, sending prices higher for major collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, which have risen 69% and 31% respectively.
Pudgy Penguins morphed from a failing project into a notable crypto-native IP under the leadership of Luca Netz, who acquired the project from the founders in 2022. Since then, Pudgy Penguins has entered retail giants like Walmart and Target with toy lines and racked up sizable social media followings, while also expanding into NFT gaming.
In July, on the WSH Podcast, Netz said that he “is betting on himself,” suggesting that Penguins would reach a 200 ETH floor price during this cycle—more than $780,000 at the current Ethereum price.
From its current floor price of 15.82 ETH, Penguins would need to increase by more than 12x to hit Netz’ target. For reference, the Bored Ape Yacht Club peaked at a floor price of about $429,000 (152 ETH) in April 2022, at the tail end of the original NFT bull run, but has since plunged to a price of about $83,500 (21.5 ETH) as of this writing.
The increase in floor prices for Pudgy Penguins and other top collections has helped push the overall NFT market cap near $9 billion, according to CoinGecko.
NFT trading activity on the Ethereum blockchain also propelled upward, more than doubling in the last week to over $101 million in trading volume according to data from CryptoSlam. Trading activity was largely concentrated among the major collections like Pudgy Penguins, Bored Apes, and CryptoPunks, which collectively accounted for 40% of the weekly volume.
Increased activity and floor prices rising in the last week has led to more excitement among NFT community members on X (formerly known as Twitter), as well, particularly after the initial Bitcoin price boom didn’t appear to have much impact on NFT prices.
“NFTs are back,” marketplace OpenSea posted last week.
But even though sentiment is improving, most major collections remain well off their all-time highs, and overall trading volume still pales in comparison to the marks from late 2021 and early 2022. The market routinely produced daily trading volumes of more than $100 million back then, according to data from Sealaunch.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are assets that hold unique attributes and properties and cannot be exchanged for an identical item—as in the case of Bitcoin, a fungible token.
Edited by Andrew Hayward