February alone accounted for 86% of CryptoPunks all time sales volume, ending with an average sale of almost $38,000 per token. Million dollar token sales are now a common occurrence for these digital collectibles which at one time could be claimed for free by anyone with an Ethereum address.
CryptoPunks have a unique place in the NFT landscape, as many argue these 10,000 pixelated and generative artworks were the first modern NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, predating the ERC-721 standard that all serious Ethereum based NFTs use today. Cryptopunks were even mentioned in EIP-721, which was the improvement protocol that brought ERC-721 NFTs to life.
Some of the highest priced sales of these punks happened in the past two weeks from this article’s publication. Five million dollars worth of Ether has changed hands in the past two weeks to purchase just four of these highly coveted tokens, three of which are “ape” punks, which are some of the most rare, of which there are only 24 in existence.
Even more rare than the ultra-rare “Ape” tokens are “Alien” CryptoPunks of which there are only nine. Back in January 23rd (about 100 years ago in the NFT world’s news cycle) CryptoPunk token #2890 made waves in the space and potentially helped jumpstart a run for NFTs by selling for $721,000 worth of Ether, the largest sale of any single token at the time.
You can keep track of CryptoPunk sales using nonfungible.com, I’ll update this article when the $100MM barrier is broken, at the time of writing we’re at around $94MM.