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Sotheby’s to Auction 104 CryptoPunks for Estimated $20M-$30M
The legendary “Punk Sweep” of July 2021, originally bought for about $7 million, is going up for sale.
By Tracy Wang
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:37 p.m. Published Feb 8, 2022, 7:26 p.m.
Sotheby’s is listing 104 CryptoPunk non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a live New York City auction set for Feb. 23.
The collection, to be sold as a single lot, is estimated by Sotheby's to fetch between $20 million to $30 million.
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The group of 104 CryptoPunks on auction was acquired last July in a single blockchain transaction by anonymous collector “0x650d,” according to Sotheby’s. The transaction is also confirmed via Ethereum blockchain analytics site Etherscan.
The auction, titled “Punk It!,”https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/punk-it will be preceded by a live panel discussion on the history of NFTs and CryptoPunks.
CryptoPunks are a collection of 10,000 NFTs released in 2017 by Larva Labs featuring pixelated portraits of punk rock looking faces. Each NFT is unique, sporting various traits and accessories, such as blue bandanas, cigarettes or mohawks.
CryptoPunks have become one of the most successful NFT collections, with a current floor price of 67.5 ETH, or approximately $207,000 in today’s ether values. That's versus an average price of about $67,000 last July when the seller in the auction bought the lot of CryptoPunks, based on the $7 million purchase price reported by Bitcoinist.
Since launching in 2017, CryptoPunks have generated about 683,000 ETH in sales volume, or over $2 billion.
Celebrities such as Jay-Z and Jason Derulo have adopted CryptoPunks as profile pictures on their social media accounts.
“CryptoPunks are the original PFP series that created the template for other NFT projects that have followed, and which helped propel NFTs to the global stage as one of the most recognizable visual styles that have become synonymous with the digital art movement,” said Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s co-head of digital art, in a statement.
Sotheby’s previously sold a rare alien CryptoPunk #7523 for $11.8 million back in June 2021.
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