NFTs

$23m ‘Alien’ CryptoPunks purchase beats previous record by almost double

On Saturday, all records were broken in the NFT space as CryptoPunk #5822 sold for an incredible 8,000 ETH, or $23.7 million, at the time of purchase.

The buyer was Deepak Thapliyal – the CEO of blockchain infrastructure firm Chain – who used leverage via DeFi protocol Compound Finance to fund the record-breaking purchase of the ‘Alien’ Punk.

Thapliyal took to Twitter following the purchase to thank Compound founder Robert Leshner – who also recently acquired an ‘Ape’ punk for $7.7m – for Compound’s role in the purchase, saying “Thanks to @CompoundFinance I am able to still HODL #ETH while buying this. Basically Long’d ETH to punk-in”.

The $23.7m purchase almost doubled the previous top sale for a CryptoPunk, which saw DraftKings’ majority shareholder Shalom Meckenzie purchase another extremely rare ‘Alien’ punk at a June 2021 Sotheby’s auction.

Whilst there have been larger NFT sales made at ‘off-chain’ auctions – including the $69.3m and $29m sales of Beeple works – Thapliyal’s purchase now marks the largest ever ‘on-chain’ purchase of an NFT.

It beats the previous record of $10.2m held by one of the most recognisable and sought-after Punks on the market – PUNK #4156 – and also takes the top spot from two other ‘Alien’ sales that took place in March 2021.

The series of ‘Alien’ Punks fetch such a high price due to their extreme scarcity and desirable nature, with just nine CryptoPunks out of the entire 10,000-strong collection being aliens. Now, only two are available for sale at the current time, with listings of $44m and $100m available for potential buyers.

CryptoPunks have seen a resurgence in the past week thanks to the announcement of a Sotheby’s auction featuring a single lot of 104 Punks, which is expected to reach upwards of $20 million when it ends on February 23.

Sean Dickens

An avid advocate of DeFi, Sean has been in the industry since 2017, studying the latest trends writing about cryptocurrencies. He studied Journalism and Media at Birkbeck University and now writes for Coin Rivet while being an active member of various communities in the crypto space - particularly NFTs.

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