No one knew what the hell PNUT was this time last week. But thanks to a tragic story, Elon Musk and a nationwide internet outrage, this near-nonexistent crypto has soared to the moons, doing $150 million in market cap in just days.

Don't worry, Doge is still the SpaceX owner's favorite crypto. But let's understand how PNUT came to be and why Elon would even make multiple posts about it on X.

PNUT is a memecoin on Solana based on Peanut the Squirrel, an internet sensation with over 500,000 followers. The crazy part is that this memecoin's rise was fueled by a tragic story. Here’s what happened.

Peanut was a squirrel rescued by Mark Longo after watching its mother get killed by a road accident. Longo had adopted Peanut for a while and later tried releasing it to the wild, which didn’t go as planned (Peanut came back injured).

Then. Longo took it upon himself to nurse the squirrel back to health. To cut the long story short, Peanut was seized and euthanized by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation after an online troll reported the pet to the authorities.

As usual, the internet was set ablaze after the story broke. Lots of people came out to condemn the actions of the DEC. It even became a political affair.

And trust memecoin creators to jump on the trend and try to make some money out of it. A Solana memecoin was created on November 1st, and soon after, it surged like crazy—thanks to Elon Musk (I know, you’ve been waiting for Elon’s part).

The launch followed a Nov. 2 post to X from Elon Musk about the pet squirrel. This single post and the wide media coverage of the news kicked off a PNUT buying spree. Lookonchain data shows that one whale paid 5,100 SOL to buy about 8.99 million PNUT, which is more than $831,000.

It did not take long for PNUT's market cap to reach an all-time high of almost $130 million. Trading volume jumped to over $300 million as its price hit a high point of $0.12. But people selling their tokens for profit have lowered the market cap to $58.6 million since then. At press time, the token was trading at $0.041.

A few meme coin traders had made money from PNUT's sharp rise. One trader made an amazing $1.7 million from PNUT, according to Lookonchain.

And as with pumps like these, some traders would be exit liquidity for others. One trader completely fell off the train with a loss of $1,099 after selling their 19.1 million PNUT. A moment of silence for his portfolio.

Peanut the Squirrel wasn’t the only pet euthanized on that day. The DEC also took out its raccoon companion, Fred. Memecoin creators also tried cashing out with Fred by launching the $FRED token but they weren’t as successful as PNUT.

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