The average price of a CryptoPunk has skyrocketed by 53% in the past week, from 34 ETH ($87,800) on July 24 to 52 ETH ($135,000) yesterday.
The sudden surge in popularity follows a buying spree that started on Friday and has continued throughout the weekend, with Sunday’s volume already at 8,520 ETH ($22 million) as of noon UTC.
The beacon was lit on Friday by motivational speaker and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who bought a CryptoPunk for 1,600 Ethereum ($3.7 million). On the same day, a pseudonymous investor named 0x650d spent 2,700 ETH ($7 million) on 88 CryptoPunks. Then there was speculation, since retracted, that an institutional investor had gobbled up more than 100 of the expensive collectibles.
If you were waiting to get a CryptoPunk, your chance to buy one for a reasonable price may be dwindling.
That's because an Ethereum whale has been on a CryptoPunk buying spree. A wallet purchased over 100 of them on Friday evening at prices from 24 to 29 ETH. That's an outlay of over $6 million.
And the whale is still buying.
Gary Vaynerchuk Just Paid $3.7 Million in Ethereum for a CryptoPunk NFT
CryptoPunks are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain-based deeds of ownership to an associated col...
CryptoPunks are the most valuable NFT project with a weekly volume of nearly $60 million. Each of the 10,000 avatars represents any of four species—including zombies and aliens—and has different facial features and headgears. Rare ones sell for millions of dollars.
According to data on NFT marketplace OpenSea, the number of sales increased from 21 on July 24 to 303 yesterday. Daily trading volume has risen by 1,342%, from 709 ETH ($1.8 million) to 16,000 ETH ($41.5 million) in the same period. Half of the 10 most expensive CryptoPunks traded hands over the past two days.
10 most expensive CryptoPunks. Image: OpenSea
Daniel Armitage, a member of the NFT investment collective PleasrDAO, told Decrypt that the mini bull run for CryptoPunks was kicked off by major purchases by Vaynerchuk on Friday, then by anonymous addresses that picked up over 100 punks.
Vaynerchuk bought CryptoPunk #2140 for 1,600 Ethereum ($3.7 million). The CryptoPunk is one of 24 ape punks, wearing one of 419 knitted caps and one of 378 small shades.
Vaynerchuk told Decrypt he’s happy with his purchase: “I have a lot of empathy for people’s curiosity or cynicism or debate, but I have incredible confidence in this asset. And I’m sure people said the same about a Jackson Pollock painting at some point.”
But he was shortly out-NFTed later on Friday. 0x650d, an anonymous investor, spent around 2,970 ETH—or $7.6 million—on 88 CryptoPunks.
Not sure how they concluded this was 3AC. But looks like the error has been rectified.
On-chain analytics shows that the 0x650d’s address withdrew 3,000 ETH from crypto exchange FTX using a Gnosis multisig, indicating that multiple people have access to the address. The holder used 99% of that money to buy CryptoPunks.
Armitage said that investments into NFTs are picking back up following the spending spree. “We're simultaneously seeing a ton of buying of Artblocks, Autoglyphs, and other top tier projects,” he said.
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
NFT Revolution
NFTs are provably unique crypto tokens that are quickly becoming increasingly popular among digital artists, gaming companies, and investors. Track the NFT revolution here.
CryptoPunks and other established NFT projects are seeing renewed interest as the price of leading altcoins rise, with recent activity concentrated on Ethereum and Solana.
The NFT market has cooled drastically in recent years, but Sunday marked its busiest day since February, with $26 million worth of tokenized JPEGs changing hands across Ethereum’s ecosystem, according to a Dune dashboard created by Hildebert Moulié, a data scientist at venture firm Dragonfly. On Monday, that was followed up wi...
It's tough to keep tabs on the ever-changing crypto gaming space, thanks to the constant flow of news: everything from big game launches and fun degen experiments to token price swings and occasional project collapses. It's a lot to follow.
Luckily, we're plugged in at Decrypt's GG. We cover the biggest happenings throughout the week, and then this weekly roundup provides a quick way to catch up, as well as find a bunch of other little bits of news from throughout the week.
Top stories
GUN expan...
Crypto gaming has seen a troubling trend of projects shutting down or being abandoned after years of hype, token sales, and chaos. Experts say it isn’t much of a surprise considering how challenging game development is, and pointed to gaming tokens as a flawed system that applies too much pressure to projects in their infancy.
It's easy to say that we all saw it coming, but in reality, a lot of the recently discontinued titles were once-promising blockchain experiences.
Deadrop, for example, wa...