Christie’s is planning the next NFT coup with CryptoPunks


After the Beeple success, Christie’s is planning the next major auction of NFT art. Next up are the CryptoPunks. Are the next price records just a matter of time?

The auction industry now seems to have really gotten a taste for it. After Christie’s caused a sensation with the sensational sale of an NFT from Beeple, a large auction of NFT art is also taking place at its big competitor Sotheby’s. Meanwhile, Christie’s is by no means resting on the $ 69 million laurels for Beeple’s NFT collage. Because with CryptoPunks the next NFT auction is already in the house. Like it in one Tweet from Thursday means, the digital collectibles come from the CryptoPunks collection of Larva Labs. They’ll go under the virtual hammer next month at the “21st Century Evening Sale” at the 255-year-old Christie’s auction house in New York.

All nine CryptoPunks are dated below 1,000, which means they were created in the earliest days of the company’s digital collectibles. The announcement means that NFT will continue to enjoy the esteem of established institutions in the art market. But that’s not all, athletes and musicians have long recognized the potential of non-fungible tokens and are expanding their participation in this sector.

CryptoPunks are the cave paintings of NFT art

Insiders know that the hype about CryptoPunks has been around for a few months. There was an initial upturn in trading activity in May 2020, but the market didn’t really get moving until September. The prices for punks have risen significantly since then. Like the Twitter account #DeGenData shows, the price rose rapidly to around 5 ETH after the announcement by Christie’s. At the current exchange rate, that’s around USD 10,400. Shortly before the groundbreaking Beeple auction, an Alien Punk # 7804 from the CryptoPunks range changed hands for USD 7.56 million. In January, a collector paid $ 850,000 for such a digital avatar.

CryptoPunks are on-chain NFTs. This means that their existence, originality and ownership notice are completely stored on the blockchain. In addition, these digital collectibles are among the very first NFTs. In a sense, they have a special status in the history of the Ethereum blockchain, which partly explains their high prices.

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If EVERYDAYS is described by Beeple as the Mona Lisa of NFT art, one could compare CryptoPunks to cave paintings to stay in the picture. From today’s perspective, they may not look particularly grand or progressive, but they are nonetheless of extreme historical importance.

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