Will Pudgy Penguins Go Up 250%? 🤩 Pengu Crypto Meme Token Analysis
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Summary
In this video, Gerhard from Bitcoin Strategy dives into the intriguing rise of Pudgy Penguins, a crypto meme token. The discussion highlights the staggering price surge of 250%, driven by factors such as market manipulation by centralized exchanges and activity in the derivatives market. Although Pudgy Penguins is booming, the rally does not align with blockchain data trends. Insights into the stable coin dominance and its implications on Bitcoin prices are also explored, while Gerhard shares his strategy of tracking insider wallets to gain an edge in this dynamic market.
Highlights
Pudgy Penguins has seen a phenomenal rise, but it's fueled by market manipulation more than genuine interest. 🔍
Despite a 250% price increase, on-chain data for Pudgy Penguins shows low accumulation from retail and whales. 🤔
Centralized exchanges play a significant role in price movements, often leveraging market influence for profit. 💰
Stablecoin inflows have resumed, affecting crypto prices with potential for a future Bitcoin surge. 📊
Pudgy Penguins, a crypto meme token, has surged by 250%, although blockchain activity doesn't reflect this excitement. 🐧
Market manipulation by centralized exchanges and derivatives trading are major drivers of this price spike. 📈
The video's creator, Gerhard, emphasizes the importance of tracking insider wallets to navigate the volatile crypto market successfully. 👀
Despite the growth, Gerhard advises caution with altcoins and focuses on influential wallets to spot winning trades. 💡
Stable coin dominance impacts crypto prices, with more stable coins indicating risk-off market sentiments. 💸
Overview
Pudgy Penguins is riding high on a wave of speculative trading, with price spikes reaching an impressive 250% increase. While this calls for excitement, Gerhard warns that the rally is largely due to centralized exchanges manipulating the market rather than genuine retail or whale interest. The phenomenon presents a textbook case of how market forces, particularly derivative trading, can drive volatility. 😲
Despite the surge, on-chain data reveals a chilling story for Pudgy Penguins, as there's limited direct blockchain activity. Investors might find this unsettling, realizing that behind the buzz, retail and whale engagement isn't matching expectations. This discrepancy spotlights the critical role of exchanges in influencing price through tactics like short squeezes. 🤔
Gerhard's video underscores the nuanced dynamics between stable coins and crypto price movements. As money flows back into the crypto ecosystem, a healthier market is anticipated. Yet, Gerhard suggests caution in diving blindly into altcoins, advocating instead for strategic moves inspired by insider wallet tracking. This insight is aimed at beating the market by leveraging the actions of crypto influencers. 👀
Chapters
00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Crypto Market The chapter titled 'Introduction to Crypto Market' discusses the excitement and dynamics within the crypto market, particularly during upward trends. It highlights Pengu as one of the top-performing tokens, examining its potential for continued success. The chapter emphasizes the importance of analyzing often overlooked data to predict the rally's sustainability, mentioning a 20% market uptick. It also focuses on Patty Penguins, detailing efforts to analyze on-chain data to track buyer and seller behavior, and notes regular coverage of PY Penguins on the channel.
00:30 - 01:00: Video Performance and Market Interest The chapter discusses the performance of a video related to pajy penguins, noting that a video published 144 days ago performed significantly better than average, whereas a recent video from a week ago only performed averagely. This raises questions about whether the long-term interest in pajy penguins is declining, despite a recent rally of 257% this month.
01:00 - 01:30: Launch Issues and Market Dynamics The launch of Py Penguins and its token, Pango, faced challenges as it appeared to be a money grab by centralized exchanges. Unlike other meme coins that are launched on community-driven platforms like Pump, Paji Penguins was abruptly listed on several centralized exchanges from the start. Additionally, the token's characteristics were unusual for a meme coin.
01:30 - 02:00: Market Manipulation and Token Activity The chapter titled 'Market Manipulation and Token Activity' delves into the dynamics of vesting schedules and token distribution. It highlights a scenario where insiders and companies receive tokens gradually over time, but the token supply is not supposed to increase until the following year. Despite this, there is a noticeable drop in the token's price beforehand. One possible explanation provided is the occurrence of over-the-counter (OTC) deals, as seen in cases like Mantra DAO or the OM token. These OTC dealings allow insiders to exit positions before the official unlocking of vesting schedules by selling off their holdings in advance.
02:00 - 02:30: Perpetual Futures and Price Discovery The chapter delves into the concept of perpetual futures and their role in price discovery within the cryptocurrency market. It begins by examining market dynamics such as price risk management through discounts in tokens offered to investors. The focus shifts to understanding the factors influencing the price movements of specific tokens, using 'Paji Penguins' as a case study. The chapter discusses the activities of retail investors and their impact on the token's price, despite the lack of significant liquidity pool presence in comparison to other trending tokens on Solana.
02:30 - 03:00: Market Equilibrium and Retail vs. Whales The chapter discusses market activity, focusing on liquidity pools and comparing decentralized and centralized platforms. It highlights Pango token's activity on a blockchain where it ranks 63rd based on activity with $4.7 million in its largest liquidity pool involving 664 wallets in 24 hours and a volume of less than $10 million. In contrast, Binance saw a spot volume of $19 million within the same timeframe, significantly outperforming on-chain activity by over 11 times.
03:00 - 03:30: Impact of Traditional Finance and Stablecoins This chapter explores the role of traditional finance and stablecoins in the market, with a focus on perpetual futures. It highlights how perpetual futures, which are leveraged derivative contracts, are primarily used for short-term speculation rather than long-term investment. The chapter underscores the significant trading volume in the perpetual futures market, noting that it reached nearly 400 million in the last 24 hours. It concludes that price discovery mainly occurs in the perpetual futures market instead of the spot market.
03:30 - 04:00: Stablecoin Dominance and Market Predictions The chapter discusses the correlation between open interest and the spot price of an asset. Open interest is represented by a green area and the spot price in yellow, showing parallel movement due to the influence of market bets, hedging activities, and arbitrage. The direction of the perpetual futures market's bets is questioned, highlighting a previously skeptical perspective.
04:00 - 04:30: Bitcoin Dominance and Altcoin Strategy The chapter discusses the concept of Bitcoin dominance in the market and strategies concerning altcoins. It covers the impact of high financing costs faced by those who short Bitcoin, noting that costs could annualize to about 60% per annum. This high cost reflects the amount shorts are willing to pay longs to bet on decreasing prices. The result can often be a short squeeze situation, where market makers buy up assets as shorts cover their positions to prevent further loss.
04:30 - 05:00: Influencer Tracking and Market Influence This chapter delves into the mechanics of influencer tracking and market influence, specifically focusing on how centralized exchanges can manipulate token prices. It draws an analogy with sports betting, illustrating how exchanges not only facilitate bets on token prices but also hold significant sway over the price movements, akin to controlling a referee in a soccer match. This dual control allows them to profit considerably from token activities, particularly through orchestrating liquidations and collecting associated fees, showcasing the complex interplay between exchanges and token markets.
05:00 - 05:30: Focus on Winning Trades and Strategy The chapter discusses the importance of observing funding rates, particularly noting that significantly negative rates often indicate an impending price increase. A return to market equilibrium is observed as the Pango token appreciates. Despite this, the success of Pudi Penguins doesn't directly impact Solana's blockchain. Additionally, there's no significant increase in the number of first-time versus recurring traders over the last month.
05:30 - 06:00: Community and Subscription Information In this chapter titled 'Community and Subscription Information,' the speaker discusses the fluctuations in the price and trading volume of a specific token. They remark on a significant price increase of over 250%, despite trading volumes not matching early figures. The speaker also highlights how centralized exchanges initially generated a lot of hype around the token, leading to its rapid rise and fall. Currently, the token's activity is picking up again, with trading on the Solana chain being influenced by a diverse range of wallet sizes, not dominated by any single cohort.
Will Pudgy Penguins Go Up 250%? 🤩 Pengu Crypto Meme Token Analysis Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 During days like this, it's fun to be in crypto. Everything is going up, but of course, some tokens are up more than others. Pengu is one of the top performers. Let's have a look at how much longer this rally can last. Let's see how much longer Patty Penguins can outperform. Let's have a look at the data most people are not considering. Now, today we are up roughly 20%. And this channel is covering PY Penguins quite regularly over here. We're looking at onchain data. We're trying to find out who's buying and selling. Now, the very first video on Pudgy Penguins
00:30 - 01:00 published 144 days ago outperformed the average video by quite a bit. So, that's the video performance in blue and the average performance is in gray. The recent video though published one week ago just performed like the average video. What exactly is going on? Is interest long-term in pajy penguins actually declining? Maybe the answer is that despite this 257% rally this month, too many people
01:00 - 01:30 got burnt upon launch because it seemed at least at the beginning that Py Penguins or the Pango token was a money grab orchestrated by the centralized exchanges. Because contrary to other meme coins, this was not a token that was fairly launched on a platform like Pump. Fun. Paji Penguins came out of nowhere and was listed on all kinds of centralized exchanges from day one. And here's something else that is very uncommon for a meme coin. The token has
01:30 - 02:00 a vesting schedule. The insiders, the company gets tokens over time. But apparently the supply does not increase until the beginning of next year. So why did then the price already go down? One explanation could be over-the-counter deals or OTC dealings. We have seen something very similar happening with Mantra DAO or the OM token. So if insiders want to get out before any vesting unlocks, they can sell their
02:00 - 02:30 tokens for a discount to people that are willing to take on the price risk. And so let's try to figure out what's actually currently moving the price. Why is Paji Penguins going up that much? Who is buying here? Who's selling here? Yes, there's a lot of retail investors that suddenly get interested in the token. Yet again, when we look at the trending tokens on Solana ordered by the liquidity pool size, we don't find Party Penguins for quite a while. The token is
02:30 - 03:00 at number 63 in terms of its activity. The largest liquidity pool that has $4.7 million worth of Pango tokens only saw 664 wallets interacting with the token in the last 24 hours. The volume was less than 10 million. And then compare this with the centralized exchanges. On Binance, the spot volume in the last 24 hours was 19 million. So more than 11 times of what happened on the Solana chain. And
03:00 - 03:30 on top of that, we've also got the bets on the price, right? The perpetual futures. So there are contracts, derivative contracts where you can bet on the price with leverage. And that's usually used for short-term speculation, not for long-term investing. And when we look at the trading volume on the perpetual futures market here, the trading volume in the last 24 hours was almost 400 million. So the price discovery really doesn't happen on the spot market. It all happens on the perpetual futures market. This is where everything is decided. And so then it's
03:30 - 04:00 no surprise that there is strong correlation between the open interest on the asset and the spot price. So open interest is here this green area and the spot price is in yellow and the two lines move in the same direction at the same time again because the bets on the price have an influence on spot as well through hedging activities through arbitrage bots. But in what direction is the perpetual futures market betting? It used to be very skeptical about this
04:00 - 04:30 rally in Pangu. So the shorts had very high financing costs. So those financing costs are every 8 hours. When we've got minus.6% every 8 hours that annualizes to roughly 60% perom. So that's how much the shorts were willing to pay the longs in order to bet on falling prices. And when that happens, a short squeeze is very likely. Now what's a short squeeze? It means that people or in this case likely the market makers buy up the
04:30 - 05:00 token. They push up the price in order to liquidate the shorts in order to get the liquidation fees. So this is how it works. The centralized exchanges own a lot of the token. They've got an influence on the price if it goes up or down. At the same time, they offer bets on the price. So imagine you wear a sports betting house. You offer bets on the soccer match. At the same time, you also bought the referee. you've got impact on that soccer match. This is how centralized exchanges make money with tokens like this. And so that's why it's
05:00 - 05:30 so useful to look at the funding rates. Whenever they are heavily negative, the price is likely going to go up rather sooner than later. But now we are balanced again. So the squeeze is over. The Pango token has appreciated. Now there is a market equilibrium again. And so interestingly enough, even though Pudi Penguins is one of the top performers, it doesn't reflect on the blockchain on Solana directly. The number of first-time traders versus recurring traders is not necessarily rising. So that's the last month. While
05:30 - 06:00 at the same time, the price went up by more than 250%. We also don't see how the trading volume is anywhere near the early days. So again, the centralized exchanges made a lot of buzz around the token upon launch. They cashed out, then the token became pretty much dead, and now it's becoming active again. We also don't see how the trading volume on the Solana chain gets dominated by a particular wallet cohort. It's all kinds of wallet sizes that trade the token
06:00 - 06:30 over time. We also don't see any accumulation, neither by retail nor by the whales. So on the left side, we see the number of wallets that have at least 70,000 Pango tokens. So at the current price, that's roughly $1,000 worth of the token. In the middle, we go a 10x from that. So that's now 700,000 tokens or $10,000. On the right, another 10x. So that's $100,000. Again, in the last month, the number of holders on chain for any of those wallet cohorts has not changed.
06:30 - 07:00 While the price went bonkers, and again, that's because of the derivatives market. It's not because people are now accumulating the token because hundreds of thousands of new investors get excited about Pudgy Penguins. It was market manipulation by the centralized exchanges. And that manipulation, that short squeeze has now stopped. And if you turn very negative on the open interest funding rate again, it's probably time to buy once more. Now, in October of 2023, the market flipped. The
07:00 - 07:30 market turned from bare to bull. The market saw inflows from traditional finance. And we can see this in this chart. This is the stable coin market cap. So it shows how many dollars in the fiat system are deposited somewhere with a custodian say with tether or with circle and what equivalent has been minted as stable coins on chain. And from May of 2022 to October of 2023, we actually saw a contraction of the
07:30 - 08:00 market. So money was flowing out of crypto. People were turning back to Trefy. People were withdrawing their money. But that then changed in October of 2023. Since then, we see more people depositing than withdrawing from the crypto ecosystem. And surprise, surprise, this is of course also an impact on crypto prices. When money is flowing in, crypto prices tend to go up. And that is what we see with this chart at the bottom. This is the Bitcoin price. So when money comes into the market, Bitcoin goes up and that is with
08:00 - 08:30 a leverage effect. So, Bitcoin appreciated by 260% since the beginning of October while the stable coin market cap went up by only 85%. Now, still there is a lot of volatility. What causes a price drop like this of 26% while there's actually money flowing into the system? The answer is swapping activity. So, it's not just people depositing their money into the system and then wait and invest for the long
08:30 - 09:00 term. Most people in crypto trade actively and whenever people move from stable coins to risk on assets like Bitcoin or altcoins, the prices go up and vice versa. So there's money flowing in and out and there is swapping activity, people getting risk on and risk off. Now we can use that data because we can have a look at how much of the entire cryptocurrency market cap is currently in stable coins. When most people have swapped into stable coins, the stable coin dominance, so the percent of all of crypto that in stable
09:00 - 09:30 coins, that's pretty high. When a lot of people have deployed their stable coins, then the stable coin dominance is low and the crypto prices are high. So check this out. This is the stable coin dominance. And this is much more volatile than the stable coin market cap. And at the peak, 19% of all of cryptocurrency's market cap was just stable coins. So that's when people are very much risk off. And that's then also when the Bitcoin price tends to be low as stable coins get deployed into risk on assets again the Bitcoin price tends
09:30 - 10:00 to go up. Now in the last 1 and 1/2 years we tended to trade in a range. So that's between 9% stable coin dominance to 5% stable coin dominance. And if this is now coming back down again as we have seen in the last few days then crypto prices will go up. Let's work with the assumption that we see the exact same development of people deploying their stable coins again as we saw in November of 2024. So let's overlay this. If we
10:00 - 10:30 take this time frame and we look at the Bitcoin price development during that time, then we can overlay this to the price today and we're getting to a potential upside of somewhere between 130 to maybe even $150,000 per BTC. And so this I think the most likely scenario. I think most people have this backwards. There are too many comparisons made with traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem. As in when the money supply is going up or when the Federal Reserve
10:30 - 11:00 is lowering interest rates, that's when money is loose and that's when crypto prices should go up. But I don't think the link is that strong. I think the link is much stronger for how much money is currently on the sidelines already within crypto. We know that the crypto ecosystem as a whole is expanding, right? The stable coin market cap is going up and that obviously matters and at the same time we also see that a lot of that stable coin money is not yet deployed but is ready to get deployed. And so if you work with that scenario, if we say okay, a lot of that money might get deployed if times get a bit
11:00 - 11:30 brighter. Should we just go now and buy all kinds of random altcoins? I am not so sure because here's the counter story to all of this. the Bitcoin dominance continues to go up. So, as a fraction of all of crypto, Bitcoin becomes more and more important. Bitcoin tends to outperform most other assets and we only saw an altcoin rally. When Bitcoin dominance was close to 70%. So, when only 30% of the
11:30 - 12:00 cryptocurrency market cap was in the alts, that's when the alts were cheap enough to subsequently make a rally. And we are not yet there. So just building a portfolio of altcoins is probably not going to cut it just yet. Here is what I'm doing instead. I'm looking at what are other influencers and other heavyweights buying. So we track various important wallets and we see for example how the Pepecoin team or the base AI team is accumulating the KEK token and
12:00 - 12:30 that's happening at a very small market cap only 3.2 million. We got notifications for all of those purchases. And though the price just continues rising, we still need an edge in this market. We can't just buy any random altcoin. But the market is expanding, it does make sense to take some risk on bets. Now, now since crypto cannot create money out of thin air, it's still a player versus player game. And so, if you follow the insiders, if you follow the people that traded well
12:30 - 13:00 in the past, we have an edge. For example, over here we've got 33 wallets that we track by the CryptoBanter group. They've got 1.16 million subscribers on YouTube. Or we are tracking 12 wallets by Alex Becca. He's got 1.6 million subscribers. Or check this out, Brian Yung. We have five of his wallets and he's got 2 million subscribers. So there are two components to this. First, those influencers tend to get information relatively fast. they tend to beat the
13:00 - 13:30 market, but secondly, they might also have an impact on the market. So when somebody with 2 million subscribers talks about a small cap cryptocurrency, of course, some of the followers will buy the token, which then pushes up the price. And so if all of those wallets that we are tracking, we get various signals who's buying and selling what at what point in time. And while it's nice that the market is expanding, it's still a winner takes most market. So returns
13:30 - 14:00 are very much concentrated in just a few assets. There are mostly losers in this market and a few winners that take it all. Just have a look at the top 100 cryptocurrencies in the last year, right? There are some tokens that perform phenomenally and a lot of them that are just losing. So just diversifying doesn't make sense. If you just build a portfolio of many different altcoins and we don't trade actively, then we are underperforming Bitcoin because Bitcoin dominance continues to rise. Instead, what we need to do is we
14:00 - 14:30 need to find ways to buy things such as virtual very early. And this is where we come back to Brian Yung. We got a signal of Brian Jung buying into the virtual token and that was at 7 cents. So that was on the 21st of March of last year. our community got excited and bought in and of course the rest is history. Right now we are at $1.75 and so this is my strategy in this market. The market is expanding. People are making profit but still returns are
14:30 - 15:00 concentrated in a few winners and we have to have a way to identify those winners and we don't have to be the best at this right we just need to know who are the best and we have to find their wallets and of course this is not public information and so we have to do onchain analytics to find the wallets and so of course there is the influencer trade channel with all of those signals but there's also a tutorial course on how to find different wallets so we use related trades We use official NFT transactions.
15:00 - 15:30 We try to figure out ways through deposit addresses on centralized exchanges, etc. to get new wallets that we then actively track with this automated bot in the channel. And since the community is learning how to find new wallets, we also have a dedicated wallet research channel. So, this is then where our 500 members look for new signs for influencer wallets. And once the moderators have confirmed those wallets, they get added to our tracking. For example, here right, we've got
15:30 - 16:00 crypto gains that suddenly out of nowhere was talking about the Champ token. And of course, we knew about this because we saw the purchase alerts before in our tracking. And so by tracking the insider wallets, we become insiders as well. Not of course in the legal sense because all data on the blockchain is 100% official and transparent, but we do have an edge over other market participants because most people don't go through all of that effort. And so it's not necessarily just about buying one asset and finding the
16:00 - 16:30 winner and holding it long-term like virtual. It's also about shorterterm trades. And so the community of course shares the winning trades as well over here. Just have a look. If you add some leverage to the game, you can make quite nice gains in a short period of time as well. So, feel free to check it out. It's currently $125 per month. If your crypto portfolio is not just $500, but rather $5,000, then it's probably going to worth it for you, especially in this current market. If it's your first time here, feel free to subscribe. I publish this regularly. A like would be very
16:30 - 17:00 much appreciate as well. It helps the channel grow. See you next time on YouTube or see you in premium. Cheers.