A lonesome penguin that was documented back in 2007 is inspiring a flood of memes and meme coins after nearly two decades. The documentary titled “Encounters at the End of the World” followed a penguin leaving its colony to march towards distant snow-clad mountains — 70 kilometers form the sea.
After glimpses of this documentary started surfacing on social media, the crypto community jumped to grab the opportunity and issue meme tokens inspired by the Nihilist Penguin. Of the random tokens, one called the “Nietzschean Penguin $PENGUIN” is seeing the most price action.
Soon after the penguin trend erupted, it mused the While House. With U.S. President Donald Trump’s pitch for control over Greenland, The White House on its official account posted a meme of POTUS walking with the lonely penguin titled, ‘Embrace the penguin’.
Following the penguin inspired post from the White House, the Solana-based $PENGUIN token reportedly spiked by over 500 percent between January 24 and January 25 taking its market cap to range between $130 million to $160 million.
Screenshots of the stats have been circulating on social media.
The White House seemingly cashed-in on the penguin hype by linking it to the ongoing talks between U.S. and the EU about Greenland. The post showed U.S. President Donald Trump holding a penguin’s hand, walking towards snow clad mountains with a Greenland flag in the distance. The penguin is depicted holding the U.S. flag.
But, as is common with memecoins — the rally of the $PENGUIN token was also short lived. As of Monday, the meme coin is trading at $0.08884 — clocking a loss of over 30 percent in the last 24 hours. Its market cap has also dropped by to $85.8 million according to DEXScreener.
Source: DexScreener
The Internet is referring to the penguin as the “Nihilist Penguin” — implying that it had developed a moral skepticism towards living which nudged him to separate from his colony, move towards the mountains, and subsequently his tragic death.
The stir around this tear-jerking documentary, however, has led to the first meme coin trend of 2026.
Older penguin-themed tokens like Pudgy Penguins and relatively newer ones like $PENGY are all trending on social media. The “pump and dump” communities have activated their circles — making these tokens volatile.
As per CoinMarketCap, $PENGUIN is currently the most visited meme coin with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu sitting on the second and third ranks respectively.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The $PENGUIN token first launched on meme coin launchpad Pump,fun and is reportedly created by an anonymous X user who goes by the handle @nietzscheanpeng. His profile is presently showing the message of “Account Suspended” over reasons unknown.
Meanwhile, Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen did laud $PENGUIN’s rally on X as a positive sign for the slowed down meme coin market.