NFT Mania Is Back? Maybe Not, but a CryptoPunk Just Sold for a Record $56.3M

A hallmark of the last cryptocurrency bull market was the remarkably high sale prices for various non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The world has largely moved on from NFTs, with enthusiasm for crypto products embellished with quirky images now directly toward memecoins – so, so many memecoins.

Yet, on Thursday, a sign of bull markets past returned: A CryptoPunk $NFT just sold for a record price of $56.3 million. The prior all-time high of $23.7 million was set in February 2022, months before the crypto winter got truly dark.

Punk 1563, depicting a pixelated woman with dark hair and blue eyes, fetched 24,000 ether ($ETH) in the transaction. As recently as September, it was offered for sale for less than 30 $ETH – meaning the latest deal represented a huge markup versus recent pricing.

NFTs have historically seen all manner of weirdness around sales. There was the time in 2021 when another CryptoPunk technically sold for $532 million, though blockchain data clearly show the same person was on both sides of the trade.

And there have been allegations that $NFT were used for money laundering.

It's not clear what the motivations were for Punk 1563, though.