The Pudgy Penguins NFT project, managed by Luca Netz, has recently significantly reduced its cryptocurrency supply, burning over 12 billion unclaimed PENGU tokens.
This action, representing about 13.69% of the total PENGU supply, was worth an estimated $150 million. Despite these measures, the PENGU token witnessed an 18% decrease in value over the past two days.
Initially scheduled to close on March 9, the token claim period was abruptly ended on January 30 by Netz, who cited the predominance of bot activity and a drop in legitimate claims as the primary reasons for the early cutoff.
According to Netz, “Only people claiming here are Bots with no interest in being a part of the ecosystem. 95% of penguins have claimed. It makes no sense to keep it open if the data says that the only people claiming today are bots running scripts for the 8 million eligible wallets.”
Following the burn announcement, PENGU’s value dropped 12% on February 5 and declined an additional 6% the following day. As of February 6, PENGU is trading at $0.011, per CoinGecko.
Despite this downturn, the Pudgy Penguins collection maintains its prominence in the NFT market, ranking as the third-largest collection after CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. The collection boasts 8,888 NFTs with a current floor price of 10 ETH, equivalent to about $27,000, and has seen 609 sales over the last week.