NFTs
NFT Sells for $16 Million in Ether as Crypto Risk Appetite Rises
- Someone purchased a CryptoPunk NFT for 4,500 ETH, or about $16 million.
- It is the second most expensive CryptoPunk NFT sale ever by dollar value.
- The buyer topped another offer of 4,250 ETH, or about $14.5 million.
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Remember NFTs? Someone just bought one for about $16 million.
One bidder paid 4,500 ether for CryptoPunk #3100, one of nine “Alien Punks” non-fungible tokens in the series. On Monday, the price of Ether fluctuated at around $3,556 per token, making the March 4 sale CryptoPunk’s second most expensive sale.
The series of 10,000 algorithmically generated characters was a milestone in the pandemic-era NFT boom. An NFT is a digital item linked to the blockchain and has a unique signature that cannot be duplicated.
The buyer of CryptoPunk #3100 topped another bid of 4,250 Ether, or about $14.5 million, that was made on March 1, according to the listing on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace. Several other CryptoPunk NFTs have recently sold for around 60 Ether, or more than $200,000, and the collection’s total trading volume reached $8.25 million last week, according to an analysis by The block.
The latest big sale is a throwback to the heyday of the digital collectibles market’s peak. At a certain point, the NFT Market saw around $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume, and collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes regularly sold for millions of dollars to celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Stephen Curry.
A September study said 95% of the NFT market may be worth nothing.
However, crypto risk appetite is increasing again. This month’s $16 million NFT sale tracks a new rally toward an all-time high of $69,000 for bitcoin. The token is close to reclaiming a price level last seen when rates were near zero, as demand for bitcoin ETFs and the upcoming halving event eclipse concerns about higher interest rates for more time.
Ether is up 51% year-to-date, tracking 50.6% bitcoin gain.