A CryptoPunk just sold for 4,500 ether, worth over $16 million at current prices

Grant's Almost Daily ^ | 03-04-2024 | Grant's

[xoxox]

Blue Note

From crypto-focused site Blockworks:

With bitcoin nearing its all-time high, eye watering nonfungible token sales appear to be cropping back up. A CryptoPunk just sold for 4,500 ether, worth over $16 million at current prices.

That’s the second largest sale ever for the blue-chip NFT collection, trailing only a $23.7 million CryptoPunk purchase made in Feb. 2022. CryptoPunk 3100, the one that sold Monday morning, sold for $2,127 in 2017 before changing hands again for $7.58 million in 2021.

There are 10,000 unique CryptoPunks. Each punk has randomly generated attributes, like differing glasses or hairstyles. Punk 3100 is one of nine so-called alien punks that have blueish skin. The rareness of this attribute has made alien punks the most sought-after CryptoPunks.

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My current grasp at trying to figure where we are is that this sort of thing is just incidental to the big push in Bitcoin — by “big push” I mean the “mainstreaming” of it by Blackrock and earlier by CME. They are creating a market, because that is what they do. Why they do it is the question — I certainly don’t think it’s to get the vig. I think they’re cashing out an elephant.