User pays $4.5 million to buy a CryptoPunk NFT

During the NFT hype phase, people used to spend millions to acquire JPEGs. With market conditions that have remained tumultuous of late, it appeared that the brakes had been applied. However, the same did not stop a particular user from purchasing a CryptoPunk NFT for 3300 Ethereum.

In what is the latest eye-catching development, CryptoPunk has been 2924 sold for about $4.45 million. Notably, this turns out to be one of the biggest sales in NFT’s history.

The CryptoPunk NFT was sold by the NFT collector ‘seedphrase’. On the chain data revealed that this NFT was previously sold in November 2020 for 150 ETH [worth $71,403 at that time].

CryptoPunk Sales

The most expensive CryptoPunk ever sold is punk #5822. The alien-style punk was sold in February of this year to Chain CEO Deepak Thapliyal for about $23 million. The same was more than double the cost of the next most profitable punk. The transaction came close to being the best-selling NFT at the time of sale, but missed the mark by only a few million.

Total CryptoPunk sales have noticed an increase of about 348% in the past day. As a result, it was the best collection in terms of sales volume at press time. Bored Ape Yacht Club was next and was followed by Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The aforementioned collections had a daily sales increase of approximately 13% and 52% respectively.

NFT Collection Rankings by Sales Volume (24 Hours) | Source: CryptoSlam

State of the NFT market as a whole

Despite the sales recovery of the past day, the NFT market is still in its slump. Using data from Dune Analytics, a recent Bloomberg article revealed that NFT trading volumes are down 97% from the highs recorded in January this year. The report noted,

“They dropped to just $466 million in September, from $17 billion at the start of 2022.”