Alien CryptoPunk sells for $12.5m as rare NFT trading heats up

CryptoPunk #635 sold for 4,000 Ether, around $12.5 million.
This is the third alien CryptoPunk to sell this year, bringing the total to 12,940 Ether, around $45 million.
While NFT volumes and floor prices continue to decline, rare NFTs seem to still be highly sought after.

One of nine alien CryptoPunks sold on Thursday for 4,000 Ether, around $12.5 million, in a trade facilitated by Fountain, a broker for high-value NFTs.

CryptoPunks is a collection of 10,000 unique, pixelated profile pictures created by the development studio Larva Labs. Each image is linked to a non-fungible token, or NFT.

NFTs are a type of digital collectible that use cryptography to verify their ownership and authenticity, serving as a digital proof of ownership.

CryptoPunk #635, previously owned by Larva Labs, was last sold as part of a collection of nine CryptoPunks for just under $17 million, or 4,250 Ether, at auction house Christie’s in May 2021.

The identity of the latest investor remains unknown.

This particular Punk is highly coveted because it is one of only nine that features the rare alien trait. For NFTs, rarity is often correlated to higher prices in a given collection.

The sale comes as earlier in the year two other CryptoPunks with alien traits were sold, bringing the yearly total for alien Punks to 12,940 Ether, or around $45 million.

On March 4, CryptoPunk #3100 sold for 4,500 Ether, around $16 million, and on March 20, CryptoPunk #7804 sold for 4,850 Ether, around $16.5 million.

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CryptoPunk #635 had previously received an offer on March 5 for 4,440 Ether, around $16.4 million, but the offer was withdrawn on April 22. By not accepting this offer, the owner of CryptoPunk #635 missed out on around an extra potential profit of $4 million.

But these transactions pale in comparison to the record-setting sale of CryptoPunk #5822, which occurred in February 2022. This Punk fetched a staggering 8,000 Ether — nearly $24 million at the time.

Thursday’s sale of CryptoPunk #635 is the latest in a series of alien Punk sales, following CryptoPunk #3100 earlier this year. This sale ended a 751-day drought in which no alien Punks were sold since CryptoPunk #5822 was purchased back in 2021.

Despite the high-profile sales, the CryptoPunks collection has experienced a significant downturn since its peak in 2021.

The minimum asking price, or floor price, for a CryptoPunk reached its peak at 113.9 Ether, about $408,000, on October 8, 2021, but has since declined to just 36.9 Ether, roughly $117,000 today.

Cryptopunk price — Daily floor price for the CryptoPunks collection (NFT Price Floor)

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, another popular NFT collection, also witnessed a dramatic shift in value. Its floor price surged to a high of 128 Ether on April 30, 2022, but has experienced a steep fall to 15.5 Ether.This trend of declining values is mirrored across the broader NFT market.

Trading volumes soared to an all-time high on April 30, 2022, largely fueled by Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse project’s NFT sale, generating over 200,000 Ether in trading volume in a single day.

Since then, however, trading volumes have trended downward. The total daily volume, as per DefiLlama, has dropped by 99% to just 1,700 Ether as of Wednesday.

Ryan Celaj is a data correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at ryan@dlnews.com.