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CryptoPunks go mainstream! Sotheby's completes second NFT auction: $16.9 million transaction

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CryptoPunks go mainstream! Sotheby

According to a tweet from the traditional art auction house Christie's, the auction house has once again completed a $16.9 million NFT auction today.

Christie's Completes Second NFT Auction

The auction featured a set of CryptoPunks artworks, consisting of 9 different CryptoPunks, which were sold for a successful price of $16.9 million, making it the third-largest NFT transaction in history, following Beeple's $69 million record in March.

CryptoPunk Digital Art

CryptoPunks, released in 2017, is one of the early NFT projects and has become increasingly scarce and valuable over time. Created by the American studio Larva Labs, the project offers 10,000 unique pixelated portraits of characters like humans, zombies, aliens, and apes. Each piece is algorithmically generated with different traits such as hairstyles, glasses, or hats, with some traits being rarer, thereby adding more value to the pieces if they possess these characteristics.

The 9 CryptoPunks sold in this auction are from Larva Labs' reserved collection. The organization initially kept 1,000 NFTs for themselves and donated the rest. Most of the NFTs in this collection have rare traits, meaning they hold higher value in the market. For instance, CryptoPunk #635 (with a blue face and sunglasses) has only 9 out of 10,000 CryptoPunks with this specific trait. Another piece, CryptoPunk #2 with heart-shaped black hair, has only two out of 10,000 in existence.

Since the NFT craze took off in February, CryptoPunks' popularity has soared. In March this year, two CryptoPunks were sold for over $7.5 million each, and in the past few months, seven others have been sold for over $1 million each.