From a six-month runway in 2022 to a projected $50 million in 2025 revenue, Pudgy Penguins beat the NFT crash with a risky bet on toys. Just about three years ago, non-fungible token (NFT) brand Pudgy Penguins was nearing bankruptcy — now it’s projected to end the year with $50 million in revenue. CEO and owner Luca Schnetzler (better known as Luca Netz) built a fortune through Instagram before breaking into the toy industry. In the blockchain world, he was among the largest Pudgy Penguins holders, but like many in the community, he wasn’t happy with the collection’s price performance. In April 2022, the project was at an all-time low. He decided to strike, acquiring parent firm Igloo for $2.5 million in Ether (ETH). But soon, Netz had some hard choices to make. The Terra collapse in May 2022 sparked a prolonged bear market. NFT assets tanked in value, threatening to turn Netz’s acquisition into a failure. Read more
South Korean traders poured $259 million into Ether-hoarding firm BitMine in July, making it the country’s most-purchased overseas stock. South Korean retail investors are pivoting away from Big Tech stocks in the United States into high-risk, high-reward crypto-linked equities. A Yonhap News Agency report citing data from the Korean Center for International Finance (KCIF) said the percentage of crypto-linked stocks in the top 50 net-bought stocks by South Korean investors rose from 8.5% in January to 36.5% in June before declining to 31.5% in July. The report added that net purchases of the top US Big Tech companies dropped to $260 million in July, down 84% from a monthly average of $1.68 billion between January and April. Read more
Chainlink has partnered with NYSE-parent Intercontinental Exchange to integrate forex and precious metals data from ICE’s Consolidated Feed into Chainlink Data Streams. Blockchain oracle platform Chainlink partnered with the US-based Fortune 500 company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) to bring foreign exchange and precious metals data onchain. Chainlink announced Monday that the collaboration will bring ICE’s Consolidated Feed, which aggregates market data from over 300 global exchanges and marketplaces, to the derived data sets that power Chainlink Data Streams. According to Chainlink, these feeds support over 2,000 decentralized applications (DApps) and major financial institutions to provide market information necessary to operate in tokenized environments. Read more