The Nietzsche Penguin (PENGUIN) token, a meme coin launched on the Solana Layer 1 blockchain network, surged approximately 564% following a social media post from the US White House.
On Friday, the White House released a social media post about President Donald Trump and a penguin walking through the snow holding hands that went viral.
According to Solana Floor, Penguin was trading with a market capitalization of approximately $387,000 before the post, and had a trading volume of $244 million in the 24 hours after the post.
According to data from DEXScreener, the token has a market capitalization of approximately $136 million at the time of this writing and trades at approximately $0.13.
“PENGUIN’s early success is proof that on-chain trading is by no means dead, but a sleeping giant just waiting for the right moment,” said Aron Cohen, co-founder of meme coin launchpad Pump.fun, the platform launched by PENGUIN.
The PENGUIN token rally comes amid a significant downturn in the memecoin market, which was one of the best-performing crypto sectors in 2024, but crashed as several big-name celebrity tokens fell more than 80% from their peak prices.
Related: Analysts say meme coin trading briefly surges as traders cash in
Meme coins show signs of resurgence in 2026 after disappointing year
In 2025, 11.6 million crypto tokens failed. This was primarily caused by the flood of meme coins launched on platforms such as Pump.fun and other similar launch pads.
According to CoinMarketCap, the market capitalization of meme coins briefly rose 23% in January 2026, increasing from about $38 billion in December 2025 to more than $47 billion.
According to cryptocurrency market analysis firm Santiment, as memecoins temporarily soared in value, mentions of memecoins on social media also skyrocketed.
Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Cronos Research, told Cointelegraph: “Meme coins typically lead when risk appetite returns. Extreme fear to neutral fear and a rebound in the greed index reinforce this shift.”
However, as the cryptocurrency market continues to move sideways, bouncing between short-term gains and declines, the memecoin market has retreated to a market cap of approximately $39 billion at the time of publication.
magazine: Memecoin: A betrayal of the ideals of cryptocurrencies…or the true purpose of cryptocurrencies?
