Demand for non-convertible tokens (NFT) is growing in the market. This model is already used by athletes as well as famous musicians and artists. An anonymous and recently created account, for example, made an offer worth as much as 3,034 ETH for 16 tokens from the CryptoPunks series. This gives us about $ 6,300,000. However, it is about the historic first NFT project.
CryptoPunks for collectors
Widely considered the first NFT contract in blockchain history, CryptoPunks contract, was established exactly on June 22, 2017. The project consists of 10,000 units. Each of them is an 8-bit image with dimensions of 24 × 24 pixels. The creators describe the whole as “A digital work containing both the image of the character and the blockchain’s ownership mechanisms.” Pixel graphics present colorful characters: the title cyberpunks. So you can consider that the game of collecting tokens is like collecting Pokemon or physical caps or cards with images of famous cartoon characters or sportsmen.
The creators of KryptoPunk, John Watkinson and Matt Hall, built an automated generator of this type of graphics. Initially, to collect CryptoPunks tokens, it was enough to pay for the transaction the necessary gas in the Ethereum network. In other words, the tokens were almost free or low cost. At least if you compare their 2017 prices with modern ones.
The project, although initially it did not arouse much interest, is today considered a cult one. The largest auction house in the world even organized auctions related to the NFT.
Millions of dollars in tokens
Artchick.eth’s account reported on Twitter one of these auctions:
200 tokens have just been bought for several million dollars in the last 2 hours since Christie’s announced the sale of the NFT.
Christie’s is an English auction house founded in 1766 in London by James Christie. It quickly became the main English auction house.
This is the Cryptopunks discord right now after 200 punks just got bought up for several millions of dollars in the past 2 hours since Christie’s announced a punk sale.
One punk bought was a rare zombie punk for around $ 800K it was one of the highest priced cryptopunk sales ever pic.twitter.com/HulQdAyXFA
– artchick.eth 🔥 (@digitalartchick) April 8, 2021
In a blog post from 2019 titled “CryptoPunks Two Year Anniversary”, the creators of the project wrote:
We’re delighted to see CryptoPunks continue to grow two years after their introduction [na rynek]. We can’t wait to see what happens in the third year and beyond!
We now know what happened. And there are many indications that this is just the beginning.
