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The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection is keeping Web3 hopes afloat in a sea of dead NFT projects and a generally muted collectibles market.The non-fungible token set became the world’s second most-valued NFTs on Wednesday, with the minimum — or floor — price for any of the 8,888 comic penguins topping $100,000 and flipping the collections' value above its comic monkey forerunner, the Bored Apes Yacht Club.That means buying a single NFT now costs more than a bitcoin, which currently trades at just over $100,000.The floor price has jumped 76% in the past seven days to over 26 ether (ETH), or just above $105,000. Bored Apes and CryptoPunks — the most valued NFTs — both fell 12% in the same period.Demand...

Crypto wallets connected to the Trump family-supported World Liberty Financial project purchased millions of dollars worth of various major tokens early Thursday, causing their prices to rocket.World Liberty Financial is a unified platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and transact with stablecoins. WLFI serves as a governance token for the platform.President-elect Donald Trump is "chief crypto advocate" of the project. Two of his sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., are "web3 ambassadors," while Barron holds the title of "DeFi visionary."Data shows the project purchased $10 million in ether (ETH), and $1 million each in aave (AAVE) and Chainlink’s LINK tokens early Thursday. ETH prices surged 7% in Asian morning hours after the purchases, while AAVE...

Only 0.55% of Microsoft (MSFT) shareholders voted for a proposal to put bitcoin (BTC) on the company's balance sheet, according to a recent company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The proposal to add bitcoin to Microsoft's balance sheet was put to a shareholder vote on November 10 and was put forward by the National Center for Public Policy Research, which recommended that Microsoft allocate 1% of its total assets to BTC as a potential hedge against inflation.Microsoft's board opposed the proposal, citing Bitcoin's volatility and favoring stable investments, despite Michael Saylor's pitch highlighting MicroStrategy's success and Microsoft's $200 billion capital outflow from dividends and buybacks.Some of the other proposed shareholder motions, which would have directed the company to produce...

With the highly successful introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, the U.S. crypto regulatory situation looking much rosier now that former President Donald Trump has been elected for a second term, and the bullish price action, it’s undeniable that 2024 was a big year for crypto.But things could get even crazier in 2025, according to Bitwise Asset Management, a firm which specializes in developing crypto investment products. The company laid out 10 crypto predictions for the year to come in a report released Wednesday, penned by the firm's chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, and its head of research, Ryan Rasmussen.First among the predictions is that all major cryptocurrencies will see new record highs. Bitcoin will push to $200,000, said Bitwise,...

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.In this issue:What does Google's quantum computing chip mean for Bitcoin?Dev's defection highlights Ethereum's growing Solana problemOrdinalsBot inscribes largest-ever file on Bitcoin blockchainPolygon touts speed of Plonky3 proving systemCrypto's most influential techies of 2024Network NewsNEED FOR SPEED: Polygon Labs claims its newest proving system, Plonky3, is the fastest on the market. (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's creator, apparently agrees.) A proving system is at the core of zero-knowledge rollups, and a crucial component for transactions that rely on cryptographic security. It is the main piece of technology that creates proofs that summarize off-chain transactions, which are...