A CryptoPunk NFT was sold at Sotheby’s Digital Art Day Sale for only $66,000. The question now is the NFT trend is over?
It’s so over
The British auction house just sold a CryptoPunk NFT, specifically #491 for $66,000.
For comparison, in 2021, at the peak of the NFT hype, Sotheby’s sold another CryptoPunk, #7523, for $11.8 million.
That NFT was an alien-themed CryptoPunk with blue-green skin, wearing a medical mask, and as many described, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of the pandemic era. It was still a jpeg.
A Sotheby’s spokesperson told that the recent sale was expected to close between $80,000 and $100,000.
The final sale price of $66,000 is more than clear sign of the decline in NFT prices since their rise in 2021.
Digital pioneers
Larva Labs’ CryptoPunks project is one of the earliest and most iconic collections of NFTs. These digital collectibles consist of 10,000 algorithmically generated characters, each represented as a 24×24 pixel image.
These figures include humans, zombies, apes, and aliens, all minted on the Ethereum blockchain.
CryptoPunks were pioneers in the NFT space in 2017, allegedly symbolizing digital ownership of unique content.
Another sign of the decline in the NFT market is the sale of Beeple’s “Madonna – Mother of Evolution” NFT, which exchanged hands for only $84,000 at the same Sotheby’s sale.
Beeple’s previous record was $69.3 million at Christie’s auction house in 2021, for his “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” NFT.
15 minute fame
The Sotheby’s sales coupled with other industry signals suggest that the once overheated hype for NFTs is gone.
OpenSea data shows a pretty big drop in the number of monthly active users and overall transaction activity in the NFT market.
GameStop announced the closure of its NFT marketplace. The company cited continuing regulatory uncertainty in the crypto space as the primary reason for its exit from the NFT market.
But if the money is good, we’re sure they could handle the uncertainty well. And next to this, X also removed all references and options related to using NFTs as account avatars.
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