Lots of 9 CryptoPunks portraits sold at just under $17 million at the Christian auction on Tuesday evening marked another moment for NFT art sales.
There were lots of pixelated portraits from the collections of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, co-creators of the NFT platform. The CryptoPunks platform is one of the first NFT projects in the Ethereum blockchain. Back in 2017 tens of thousands of procedurally produced characters were given away for free in the years that followed, a vibrant NFT community developed around the ‘Punks’. In recent months, prices have exploded behind the broader NFT boom. Last month, the TechCrunch community and some of its customers paid tens of millions and millions of dollars to join the exclusive club of CryptoPunks owners.
Tuesday’s sale paid a hefty salary to the project’s creators, but several more days later: their new project Meebits was released, which sold nearly $80 million in just a few hours. The final Christy bid was $14.5 million, followed by a fee of $16.96 million. Many in the crypto community had the idea that sales would reach even higher premiums in recent weeks, which brought a substantial run to crypto prices just weeks before the auction.
Although the lot sold for significantly more dollars, the full bundle was sold at a slightly lower price than the previous Alien’s sale price when the increased Ethereum cryptocurrency was priced at, 4,200 Eth (some $7.2M) in March at the time).
Many in the crypto community expected sales to reach even higher premiums in the coming weeks. The lot was sold at a fairly high price due to a significant price increase at CryptoPunks just weeks before the auction, but when the Ethereum cryptocurrency was priced face to face, the entire bundle was the last alien image to sell to 4,200 ethers in March. (Then) it was sold at a slightly lower price than the selling price. Tuesday’s sale will be a significant payoff for project makers, but a few days later, it will be much fuller. In just a few hours, it recorded nearly $ 80 million sales.
