Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) token price took the crypto market by storm this week and did even better on Wednesday, as it rose by more than 100 percent in 24 hours. PNUT price was up by 221 percent and traded at $1.398 at the time of writing, on a day when the larger crypto market was down.
As the meme coin soared, the market bellwether, Bitcoin, was down by 0.4 percent, while the top two meme coins by market capitalization, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu, were down by 0.8 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively.
The PNUT price hype began in the leadup to the US presidential election, when digital content creator, Mark Longo revealed that the popular squirrel, Peanut, had been confiscated and euthanised by officials from the New York State Department for Envoronmental Conservation after suspected rabbies exposure.
The move drew widespread public criticism, including from popular personalities like Elon Musk and VP-elect, JD Vance. Longo ran Peanut’s Instagram account, which had over 600k followers, and that made it easy to generate traction following the news. However, the strongest tailwing came in on Thursday after Elon Musk put up an X post captioned “The prophecy has been fulfilled” referencing a six-year old post by Reddit on a squirrel.
As meme coins are typically emotion and hype-driven, the crypto community quickly picked up the post and used it to pump up PNUT price. Musk is known for his strong support for digital currencies, and is the defacto ambassador of Dogecoin, the largest meme coin by market capitalisation.
As to whether PNUT price will hold up is a different question altogether, but for now it is soaring, driven by a Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) sentiment. In addition, its recent listing by major centralised exchanges like Binance, OKX and Gate.io has added propulsion.
PNUT coin price pivots at 1.288, and the buyers are likely to stay in control above that level. The momentum will likely encounter initial resistance at 1.487. However, if the upward momentum strengthens, the price could break above that level and test 1.600.
Conversely, moving below 1.288 will signal that sellers are incontrol. In that case, PNUT is likely to find the first support at 1.137. However, extended control by the sellers could break below that level and test 1.003.
This post was last modified on %s = human-readable time difference 10:36