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Why Academics Love Bitcoin – and Crypto

For academics, bitcoin, and more broadly crypto, is an exciting space where the ideas they write up in papers actually get built and tested.

Updated Sep 13, 2021, 9:17 a.m. Published Jun 10, 2019, 1:00 a.m.
Academia, Bitcoin at 10

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Pudgy Penguins: A New Blueprint for Tokenized Culture

Pudgy Title Image

Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.

What to know:

Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.

The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.

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Rollercoaster bitcoin price moves end up liquidating $1.7 billion in bullish crypto bets

(Christian Dubovan/Unsplash, modified by CoinDesk)

More than $1.7 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in 24 hours as bitcoin fell to $81,000, with long bets accounting for nearly all the damage amid macro jitters and Fed chair speculation.

What to know:

  • More than $1.68 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in 24 hours, with about 267,000 traders forced out of trades.
  • Long positions accounted for nearly 93 percent of the wipeout, led by roughly $780 million in bitcoin and $414 million in ether liquidations.
  • Analysts say the sell-off was driven less by new bearish sentiment than by overcrowded leverage unwinding, flushing out speculative excess and reducing forced flows in the market.