Asset manager Canary Capital ETF Filing

Canary Capital, an asset manager, has filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking PENGU, the governance token for Pudgy Penguin. The ETF would hold both PENGU and Pudgy Penguin nonfungible tokens (NFTs), as well as other cryptocurrencies, such as SOL and ETH, that may be necessary for the purchase, sale, or transfer of PENGU and the associated NFTs.

Nashville, Tennessee-based Canary Capital filed an S-1 form with the SEC on March 20. This marks the first proposed ETF that includes NFTs, structured as a trust expected to hold 80%-95% PENGU and 5%-15% NFTs. No custodian or exchange has been selected yet.

From NFTs to ETF

There are 8,888 Pudgy Penguin NFTs priced on OpenSea from 9.86 ETH ($19,499) to 9,000 ETH ($17.8 million), although most listed NFTs were selling for 500 ETH ($988,805) or less. According to the S-1, Canary Capital will select which NFTs to purchase by considering factors like price, rarity, perceived desirability, and overall collection value.

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection launched in July 2021 on Ethereum. In May 2023, Pudgy Penguins signed with the WME talent agency. Retailer Walmart has carried a line of stuffed toys called plushies depicting the penguins since September.

The PENGU token launched on Solana in December 2024 with an airdrop of 25.9% of the 88.89 billion tokens distributed to NFT holders based on their rarity. It had an initial market cap of around $2.8 billion and trades on Binance, Bybit, and OKX.

Canary Capital’s Support for Altcoin ETFs

Igloo, Canary Capital’s parent company, posted a statement on X, emphasizing their belief that Pudgy Penguins represent innovation and mass adoption of blockchain technology.

Canary Capital is a pioneer in altcoin ETFs, having filed documents for ETFs tracking Litecoin, Hedera, Solana, and XRP.

PENGU has very few identified use cases apart from being a collector’s item, as noted in the S-1. There is no guarantee it will continue to gain in value. The token opened at $0.00689 on March 20, peaked at $0.00732 by 4:00 p.m. GMT, and then dropped to $0.00646. Its all-time high of $0.0428 was recorded on Jan 6 according to CoinGecko, with a market cap around $406 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $161 million.