Christie’s sells NFTs: this time there are the $ 9 million CryptoPunks
A new auction of digital works of art in NFT could once again break the art market
Only a month has passed since the record auction that saw Beeple and Christie’s as protagonists and since then the world of art has undergone a real revolution: the phenomenon of Crypto Art has definitively exploded and now the English auction house is ready to sell, for the second time, works of art in NFT!
Christie’s announced that on the evening of May 13 in New York during the Evening Sale dedicated to contemporary art, a batch of “CryptoPunks” – a cult series of NFT characters on the Ethereum blockchain, will be on sale, estimated at between $ 7. and the $ 9 million.
Created in 2017 by Matt Hall and John Watkinson, developers of Larva Labs (an agency specializing in technology projects), the “CryptoPunks” take the form of old 8-bit video game avatars. Each of them has its own appearance and differ from each other in the features of the face, the color of the eyes and / or hair and other physical characteristics that, after release, cannot be changed.
According to Noah Davis, Christie’s specialist, the “CryptoPunks” are “the alpha and omega of the crypto movement”. For some, they symbolize the anti-establishment and rupture spirit that characterized Crypto Art in its early days and evoke the London punk scene of the 1970s or the dystopian atmospheres of films like “Blade Runner”.
Yet for others their meaning remains a mystery, so much so that Charles Stewart, CEO of Sotheby’s, even wondered if they were art.
Beyond these statements, however, it is necessary to underline how the high amount requested brings with it a double question: if on the one hand such an important sum can mean a further affirmation for the NFT market, on the other it is right to underline how may be a symptom of a cooling. It should be borne in mind that before the extraordinary sale of Beeple at Christie’s on March 11, another pair of “CryptoPunks” had been sold for $ 7.5 million each. A group of 9 is now expected to be beaten for the same amount.
The prices of NFTs, in fact, in the last period have started to decrease more and more: from the average $ 4,000 in mid-February, they have gone down to $ 1,400 in recent days, with an estimated drop of 70%. However, the demand for “CryptoPunks” remains high: recently, in fact, there have been 388 sales of these works which alone generated $ 20.5 million in total revenue.
The lot that will be sold in May brings with it a peculiarity that bodes well: the group of characters depicted also includes a very rare blue-skinned “alien” that belongs to a subset of the most sought after “punk”. In fact, there are only 9 examples of this family, making the work a real collector’s item that cannot be found.
Photo credits: Nicolas Asfouri/Afp Via Getty Images
