Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT): The Viral Meme Coin With a Heartfelt Story
The world of meme coins thrives on controversy, hype and social media–driven frenzy. An in-depth look at the history of the rise of Dogecoin (DOGE) — the undisputed leader among meme coins — is enough to draw that conclusion. Over the past few months, several meme coins minted via platforms such as Pump.fun and SunPump have gone viral for either controversial or otherwise notable reasons. However, not many among even these viral coins have managed to rival the hype and stratospheric rise of Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT).
A Solana (SOL) meme coin launched in early November 2024 via Pump.fun, PNUT has stolen the spotlight in the crypto market because of tragic events surrounding the pet that inspired the coin, the U.S. presidential election that resulted in a Donald Trump victory, and tweets on the topic from none other than the grand meme coin promoter, Elon Musk.
Key Takeaways:
Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) is a Solana-based meme coin inspired by the tragic story of Peanut, a pet squirrel seized from its owner and euthanized in early November 2024.
Spurred by the story's effect on the U.S. presidential election’s discourse and Elon Musk's tweets, PNUT turned into a viral meme coin with a market cap that has surpassed $2 billion just 11 days following its launch.
PNUT can be traded on Bybit as a USDT Perpetual contract.
The Story of Peanut the Squirrel
In 2017, Norwalk, Connecticut resident Mark Longo, on a visit to New York, found a squirrel whose mother was killed by a car. Mr. Longo rescued the orphaned animal and raised it for the following six years in his Connecticut home. Named Peanut, the squirrel became an Instagram celebrity when Mr. Longo started posting videos of it on the social media platform. By late 2024, Peanut had amassed an impressive Instagram fan base of over 500,000 followers.
In April 2023, Mr. Longo and his wife Daniela moved from Norwalk to upstate New York and created an animal sanctuary there. Naturally, their favorite pet, Peanut, also found residence at the Longos' new address.
The Tragic Event and Its Aftermath
Unfortunately for Peanut, the state of New York has strict laws that prohibit keeping wild animals in a residential setting. Along with their beloved pet squirrel, the Longos were also housing another animal, a raccoon named Fred, at their New York home. A number of complaints regarding the wild pets kept at their home were raised, and Mark Longo found himself the target of attention from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC).
Mr. Longo initially stated that he had released the animals into nature. However, Peanut's continual appearance in Instagram postings made it obvious that the squirrel was still at the Longos' residence. The DEC continued to pursue the case, and on Oct 30, 2024, the agency's officials — arriving as a formidable team of between six and eight officers — entered the Longos' home on the basis of a search warrant and seized both pets, Peanut and Fred.
As alleged by the DEC, Peanut bit one of the officers during the seizure of the animals. Fearing that the animals might carry rabies, both Peanut and Fred were euthanized on Nov 1, 2024. Following the euthanasia, tests carried out established that neither animal had had rabies.
The heavy-handed approach by the DEC, which sent a team of at least six officers to the property, and the subsequent euthanasia of the animals caused an outcry on social media. Many people, including political figures and celebrities, have commented that the government should be preoccupied with real issues facing the public instead of seizing pets from homes. Among the prominent figures that condemned the euthanasia of Peanut — which received much more attention than that of Fred, due to the squirrel’s Instagram celebrity status — were New York congressman Nick Langworthy and the world's richest person, Elon Musk.
The fact that the animals' tragic deaths occurred just days before the U.S. presidential elections politicized the issue, turning Peanut's story into a debate on freedoms and government overreach.
The Birth of the PNUT Meme Coin
It didn't take long for meme coin creators to seize on the internet sensation caused by Peanut's fate. The day after the squirrel's death, Nov 2, 2024, Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) meme coin was launched on the Solana blockchain via the popular meme coin generator Pump.fun.
Pump.fun's choice here isn't surprising. By late 2024, Pump.fun has emerged as the leading meme coin generator platform in the crypto world. The platform lets users easily and affordably launch Solana-based meme coin assets.
PNUT's Rise
Since its introduction on Nov 2, 2024, PNUT has experienced an epic rise, growing by nearly 2,600% between its launch date and the time of this writing (Nov 14, 2024). The coin's initial price (when it was first listed on CoinGecko on November 2) was around $0.076. In the days before the Nov 5, 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk posted tweets lamenting the way Peanut was dealt with and turning the squirrel into a kind of political martyr and cause. One of the tweets, posted on November 3, read: "Vote For PNut! For Liberty! For Freedom!".
Source: X
It's possible that Musk was referring to the euthanized squirrel only, and not to the PNUT meme coin when using the "PNut" spelling. Whatever was on the mind of the wealthiest fan of meme coins, the utilized spelling acted as another boost for the virality of the PNUT crypto token.
However, the real catalyst to the skyrocketing price of PNUT was the announcement of the token's listing on Binance on Nov 11, 2024. The day before the announcement, PNUT was trading at slightly under $0.13. Following the news, PNUT's price began to catapult, hitting an all-time high of $2.44 on November 14, with a market cap of over $2 billion. However, typical of meme coins’ prices, its value slipped rather substantially the next day from its ATH, to $1.69 with a market cap of $1.69 billion.
Source: CoinGecko
Naturally, with the hype surrounding PNUT and its meteoric rise, many critics believe that the token is another pump-and-dump scheme. Whatever the case may be, PNUT continues to enjoy massive popularity among meme coin investors during its initial days on the market.
Where to Buy PNUT
PNUT is already available on Bybit as a Perpetual futures contract based on USDT (PNUTUSDT). Under the contract, you can trade PNUT with up to 50x leverage.
If you consider investing in the coin, it's also essential to do your own thorough research on it before buying as PNUT is a meme coin, and is currently driven by social media hype and political events surrounding the recently concluded U.S. elections. Thus, careful research on the coin's prospects is highly recommended.
PNUT Coin Price Prediction
As of Nov 18, 2024, PNUT is worth $1.69, 32.3% lower than its ATH price of $2.44 on Nov 14, 2024. The current price is over 5,200% higher than the coin's ATL of $0.03187, registered on Nov 4, a day before the U.S. elections.
Although PNUT's drastic uptrend is currently ongoing, price trajectories for highly hyped meme coins can be extremely volatile. For this reason, major price prediction portals diverge in their assessment of PNUT’s long-term prospects. For instance, PricePrediction expects PNUT to average $0.0946 in 2025 and $0.6165 in 2030. In contrast, CoinCodex is much more bullish on PNUT, forecasting prices of $4.56 in 2025 and $6.62 in 2030.
Closing Thoughts
A string of events in late October and early November 2024 transformed Peanut the Squirrel — unfortunately, posthumously — from a pet with an Instagram base into a political cause that injected significant debate into the U.S. presidential elections. In the finest traditions of internet culture, meme coin creators quickly leveraged the issue, creating and quickly hyping the PNUT coin. Just twelve days from its launch, PNUT is scaling heights that many other hyped meme coins could only dream of. The coin's stratospheric rise is an ongoing event, with its future developments difficult to predict.
For observers who believe that meme coins were starting to lose their earlier shine, Peanut the Squirrel now looks intent on proving them decisively wrong.
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