PENGU surges 14% on ‘Pengu Minibot’ hype – But $1.5M squeeze hints at…

PENGU overtook TRUMP as rising leverage and buying pressure pushed price toward the $0.012 resistance.

Written by Evans Boto

Reviewed by Renuka Tahelyani

Updated 20:00 EDT September 23, 2026

PENGU surged 14.19% after partnerships and Korea Blockchain Week exposure brought significant attention to its ecosystem worldwide.

The price rally accompanied a promotional activity with WEEX and the first unveiling of a “Pengu Minibot” during the Korea Blockchain Week.

As a result, these developments gave traders renewed catalysts as the broader social attention around PENGU also accelerated.

Crucially, investors supported the attention with greater spot participation as the spot volume also surged 38.47% to $467 million over 24 hours.

This expanding activity therefore accompanied PENGU’s price advance, strengthening the demand supporting its recent upward move. This also separated the price expansion from a rally driven purely by thin market liquidity.

Besides, PENGU’s rising market position also introduced another indication that capital increasingly favored the token during the session.

PENGU flips TRUMP in Solana rankings

As token demand rose, Pudgy Penguins [PENGU] surpassed TRUMP, becoming the largest Solana memecoin in regard to market capitalization.

In particular, PENGU reached roughly $638.84 million, while TRUMP stood at nearly $620.05 million during the recent ranking.

Notably, this shift carried significance since PENGU gained ground as the broader Solana memecoin market also advanced.

Instead of simply following sector strength, the memecoin captured enough demand to overtake its larger rival.

Additionally, the token’s 14.19% daily price surge also considerably exceeded TRUMP’s 2.1% price advance.

The change therefore reflected stronger relative performance during the recent memecoin rotation.

Leverage rises as shorts absorb pressure

The futures positioning offered another view as derivatives traders increased exposure aggressively as PENGU extended its breakout.

According to CoinGlass, PENGU’s Open Interest climbed 39.61% to $167.17 million, while its derivatives volume surged 49.03% to $560.34 million.

These increases suggested traders added leveraged positions as the token pushed towards higher price levels.

Additionally, the Binance Top Traders also leaned towards further price increases, although the positioning varied across the broader derivatives market.

Accordingly, their account-based Long/Short ratio reached 1.6096, while the positions ratio climbed to 2.4278. The broader 24-hour ratio, however, remained slightly below parity at 0.9493.

Therefore, that divergence created enough bearish exposure for the rising price to pressure short positions aggressively.

In fact, the short liquidations accounted for $1.54 million of the $1.93 million liquidated within 24 hours. While the long liquidations reached only $396,280, making shorts the dominant casualties during the recent price advance.

Can PENGU finally clear $0.012?

PENGU’s price action placed the rally directly below a price level that had repeatedly contained the token’s weekly recovery attempts.

At the time of reporting, the memecoin traded around the $0.010688 price level after rebounding strongly from the lower portion of its prolonged weekly range.

Notably, the $0.012 boundary remained significant since the previous price advances struggled to establish a breakout beyond that zone.

Buyers however approached this test with improving directional conditions, with the RSI sitting at 57.85, comfortably above its average without reaching overbought territory.

Besides, the DMI indicator was also in support of buyers, with +DI signal reaching 27.97 against the lower -DI signal reading of 18.96.

The DMI’s ADX strength indicator remained at 17.69, implying the directional strength had not yet become firmly established.

The $0.012-resistance therefore remained the decisive test. A weekly close above this level could hence expose the $0.0225 level as the next major resistance zone.