PENGU Community Rocked by $66 Million Team Dump and Flood of Scammers

Over the last few weeks, the Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) team transferred approximately 2.1 billion PENGU tokens (valued at about $66.6 million) to centralized exchanges. Just today, on July 28, a 206.9 million-token transfer (approximately $8.9 million) took place.

PENGU has surged roughly 240% over the past month, driven by ETF-related hype, though analysts warn that this large-scale token movement by team insiders signals potential liquidation and price dumps.

Rise in phishing scams targeting PENGU community

However, more troubling is that in tandem with price movements, scammers have ramped up phishing and dust‑token tricks. To be more precise, small amounts of PENGU are sent to random wallets with vanity names that lead to fake domains mimicking the project, which results in unsuspecting users getting tricked into connecting wallets and signing malicious transactions.

Yesterday, Beau (head of security at Pudgy Penguins) confirmed that there is no official PENGU airdrop or claim currently available.

Near the end of last year, fake sites posing as the official Pudgy Penguins page have also been flagged, often distributed via harmful ads.

Despite being backed by the Pudgy Penguins IP and growing NFT community, PENGU remains a rather speculative memecoin. Big token movements, particularly those by major holders without transparent communication, can still trigger concerns about possible market manipulation and unaligned interests.

Hype-driven rally

Much of the recent PENGU’s boost came from social media hype, rather than anything substantial. Namely, Coinbase changed its X profile picture to a Pudgy Penguins NFT, which was enough to send the price up by around 60%.

Then, not long before this, the SEC processed new filings, notably a 19b-4 application from Cboe seeking approval to trade the Canary PENGU ETF. Canary Capital first filed for the ETF in March.

Due to the hype, some analysts remain skeptical that PENGU can sustain its gains unless real adoption or utility follows.

Currently, PENGU is sitting at a price of $0.04229, registering an increase of roughly 15% in the last 7 days.

With the $66 million token dump and a rise in scams, PENGU is a cautionary tale of how meme-token hype cycles can backfire fast, especially when mixed with insider selling and a rush to monetize IP.