Getty Image / Cindy Ord
Someone has just spent over $16 million hard-earned US dollars on an NFT in 2024, a rare ‘alien’ CryptoPunk NFT that was 1 of 9 ‘Alien CyrptoPunks’.
1 of 9! That apparently still means something in the NFT world because a buyer forked over 4,500 ETH for the alien CryptoPunk, or CryptoPunk 3100. Meanwhile, the entire industry watched the transaction happen and wondered… why?
The world has known for a very long time already that NFTs were virtually worthless. BroBible’s Douglas Charles wrote about this back in December. At the time, he wrote “Another report published earlier this year by the website dappGambl, stated that 69,795 of the 73,257 NFT collections the researchers examined had a market cap of zero ether, which is good for a rate of just over 95%.”
That’s 95% of the entire NFT market deemed to be completely worthless! Yet, somehow this CryptoPunk NFT just sold for the 2nd most of any CryptoPunk NFT ever sold.
This particular NFT, CryptoPunk 3100 originally sold for $2,127 in 2017. It was sold for $7.58 million in 2021. And now it has made history after being sold for $16+ million (4,500 ETH).
As news of this NFT sale made its way to social media, the crypto industry was puzzled. In response to the ‘Unusual Whales’ account announcing the news, a lot of X users replied with jokes.
This just sold for $16 million.
It is the second most expensive CryptoPunk ever.
It was CryptoPunk #3100, one of nine so-called “Alien Punks.”
It sold for 4,500 ETH. pic.twitter.com/jYt87tknly
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) March 4, 2024
Tyler Morin wrote “Nature is healing” in response to the news. The next top two replies called into question the validity of the transaction. Bear in mind, there is no evidence of wrongdoing here. But that hasn’t stopped X users from making jokes and saying things like “Money laundering via crypto is back on the table” and This has to be some kind of money laundering right?”
There are also responses like this reminding the world how easy it is for people to acquire NFTs themselves:
Post by @kadenzlolView on Threads
Again, there’s no evidence that anything illegal happened with this transaction. But that hasn’t stopped about 99% of the social media chatter from focusing in on the legality or lack-thereof with regards to this $16M+ CryptoPunk NFT sale.
Surely, a sale of this magnitude will be investigated by somebody, right? Right?? Well, nobody in the crypto world seems to think so. Or if they do, they’re not saying it out loud.