Rise of the NFT Punks
CryptoPunks are 🚀, Beeple's going to Christie's, & Mad Dog Jones made $4M in minutes on Nifty Gateway!
Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
CryptoPunks, Ethereum’s OG digital collectibles project, experienced astonishing levels of demand this week.
How poetic, then, that this “Rise of the Punks” came in the same week it was announced that Everydays artist Beeple will have a piece auctioned as the 1st NFT ever sold through legendary mainstream auction-house Christie’s.
Why poetic? Beeple comes as an outsider, a punk if you will, to this great bastion of the physical art world, and he’s coming armed with an NFT, the ultimate new tool of internet-native creators for determining their own artistic destinies.
This is what Beeple’s auction and the CryptoPunks ascension are representing, that the age of the NFT punks has decisively arrived. We don’t care what the old world thinks: we want to do things our way, and now we have the power to with NFTs.
-WMP
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🏆 Digital Collectibles
CryptoPunks was 🔥 this week. The Punks floor price is now +12.5 ETH, and we saw ape Punk 4156 sell for 650 ETH + ape Punk 6965 sell for 800 ETH, which are now the highest ETH/USD sales in CryptoPunks history!
Punk 7804, the only smoking alien CryptoPunk, just received a whopping 12k ETH (~$21M) offer.
CryptoKitties Founder Cat #84 (one of the first 100 CryptoKitties ever created) sold for 33.76 ETH this week. We also saw Nifty Report buy the only Gen 0 Fast Shipcat for 50 ETH ...
🎨 Cryptoart
Beeple is auctioning off EVERYDAYS — THE FIRST 5,000 DAYS through the prestigious auction house Christie’s. It’s the first time the major art business will be auctioning off a purely digital piece, i.e. an NFT. Christie’s has announced they’ll be accepting bids in ether (ETH) for the artwork, too ...
beyond honored and humbled to be a part of this. 🙏Christie's is proud to offer "Everydays - The First 5000 Days" by @beeple as the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house. Bidding will be open from Feb 25-Mar 11. Learn more here https://t.co/srx95HCE0o | NFT issued in partnership w/ @makersplaceco https://t.co/zymq2DSjy7
Christie's @ChristiesIncBillionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya revealed he’s currently creating a portfolio of NFTs, including some cryptoart.
The price floor for Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers series through Art Blocks has reached 4 ETH. Volume around the pieces is on the verge of hitting $1M!
Uniswap creator Hayden Adams is selling his “Unicorn Fart” NFT sculpture by John Orion Young for 128 ETH 🦄
Artist Mad Dog Jones sold nearly $4M worth of open edition NFTs through Nifty Gateway this week!
Programmable art platform Async Art closed a $2M seed round. Congrats! 🎉
Kai’s 27-Bit Digital drop on generative art platform Art Blocks sold out in a matter of minutes …
🕹️ Blockchain Games
There were a flurry of sales around Single Mystics, i.e. Axies with one Mystic body part, in recent days. For example ...
The Cristiano Ronaldo 2020-21 Unique card has the community of fantasy ⚽ game Sorare buzzing.
Ethereum no-loss savings game PoolTogether airdropped its users POOL tokens this week!
🌐 Virtual Worlds
Collector Bill Lee purchased the 70 Block Fork, 74 Block Fork, and 75 Block Fork parcels in Cryptovoxels for 100 ETH each ...
The Blockchain Education Network (BEN) held its first ever event in Decentraland this week.
🛒 NFT Marketplaces
OpenSea added support for buying and selling NFTs in Rai, a new non-pegged stable asset that’s vying to become a native unit of account for Ethereum ...
💎 DeFi x NFTs
Charged Particles, which lets you turn NFTs into baskets for ERC-20 tokens, unveiled its LEPTON NFTs. These collectable NFTs will also serve as a liquidity mining multiplier in Charged Particle’s coming LM campaigns.
APE$, a fractionalized version of Punk 2386, is trading at a 422 ETH valuation on NIFTEX right now. Is that a steal, since we just saw another ape sell for 650 ETH this week? You be the judge!
Crypto market data site CoinGecko listed $PUNK-BASIC, an index fund token by NFTX that’s designed to track the floor price of CryptoPunks.
Action Steps
Read the free edition of “NFT Report 2020” by NonFungible.com.
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case.