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What are CryptoPunks and why are they blowing up the NFT art world?

source-logo  bravenewcoin.com 06 April 2021 00:01, UTC

CryptoPunks first launched in June 2017 and were developed by a two-person team of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, at American Game Studio Larva Labs. They are 24×24 pixel art images that are algorithmically generated. CryptoPunks were released before CryptoKitties. They are innovators in the NFT space and were one of the inspirations for ERC-721 tokens - which unlike ERC-20 tokens, are all one-of-a-kind.*Recent CryptoPunk sales*

There are 10,000 unique collectible CryptoPunk characters with proof of ownership on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Of the 10,000 total punks, most are human but there are also 88 Zombies, 24 Apes, and 9 Aliens that are designated as special punks.

One of the nine alien NFTs, CryptoPunk 7804, was sold on March 10th for ETH4200 (around $7.5 million). For a day this made it the most expensive NFT ever sold, but even its huge price tag was dwarfed when Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days, sold at Christie’s for $69 million a day later. Punk 7804 was bought by Ethereum account 0xf4b4a58974524e183c275f3c6ea895bc2368e738. The purchase is first activity of any kind conducted by the account on the Ethereum blockchain.

The account that sold the Punk, 0x03911fecabd6b4809c88e2e6eb856ec932b2ee3e, first bought CryptoPunk 7804 on January 10th 2018 for 12ETH (worth USD15,000) at the time. The account has secured a massive profit on its initial investment. It also sold an Ape CryptoPunk for 800ETH (USD1.2 million) on February 21st 2021. *CryptoPunk 7804 - was the most valuable NFT of all time for a day*

There will only ever be 10,000 CryptoPunks - and all been created and sold already. Trading for them now occurs on secondary marketplaces. CryptoPunks can be bought and sold on the ‘Punks for Sale’ page on the Larva Labs website. They can also be bought and sold on Opensea, the largest online digital art marketplace for crypto collectibles and NFTs. They can be found under the Art and Collectibles collections. Sites like CryptoArtPulse.com, and Cryptoslam.io track sale prices in the NFT market.

What is an NFT?

A Non-fungible token (NFT) is a type of cryptographic token which represents something unique. Or put another way, non-fungible tokens are not mutually interchangeable by their individual specification in the way that crypto-assets such as Bitcoin are. Non-fungible tokens can be used to create verifiable digital scarcity. NFTs come in various forms. Some examples include digital baseball cards, in-game items in a role-playing game, art, digital pets that resemble Tamagotchi, physical items like socks, and copyrighted music._CryptoPunks popularity picked up in late 2020 and has surged strongly this year. Source: Nonfungible.com_

CryptoPunks have reemerged in the mainstream crypto zeitgeist after CryptoPunk 2890 sold for 605ETH (USD761,889 at purchase), on January 23rd. Another punk, CryptoPunk 4156 sold for 650 ETH, which at the time equaled USD1.24 million dollars. Bids for CryptoPunks continue to hit high eye watering numbers.*CryptoPunk 2890*

CryptoPunks is currently the most popular NFT art marketplace by weekly and total traded USD volume. There has been $9,778,493.52 worth of CryptoPunks traded in the last week - which is just ahead of the next most popular NFT art project SuperRare.

Why are CryptoPunks so valuable?

The popularity of Hall and Watkinson’s creations has surprised many. CryptoPunks don’t do anything, there is no famous artist adding value and no popular franchise attached to them. Popular market commentator and investor, DCinvestor said about CryptoPunks on Twitter, “They have an 8-bit charm and make for fun avatars (like mine). At 10K, there are enough to sustain a broad collector base, but also scarce enough to be valuable.”

Hall told Mashable in 2017 that the project was created to test out the dynamics of scarcity and demand. CryptoPunks have been generated algorithmically from a set of templates, each one is different but some are made up of more rare template pieces than others._CryptoPunk #3586, A punk with a few unique features_

Like art, pokemon, and trading cards there is a collectible nature to CryptoPunks, however Hall explains that what they really wanted to create was something that was truly scarce and not subject to the whims of anyone, even the creators. "There's Pokémon and these kinds of things,” he says, “but it's a weird world where everything is replicable." Once CryptoPunks went live on the Ethereum blockchain, their scarcity was guaranteed as no one could issue more punks and none could be altered.<center><a href="https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x?r=9685fbe6533f"><img width=728 height=90 alt="Ledger Nano X - The secure hardware wallet" src="https://www.ledgerwallet.com/images/promo/banners/ledger_banner_7-2-8x9-0.jpg"></a></center><br class=”blank” />

CryptoPunks are a combination of art, technology, absurdity, and social experimentation that is analogous to radical tokenization methods used by artists like Andy Warhol. Art Historian Blake Gopnik explains these similarities in an article for The Art Newspaper. He says Warhol would turn out unlimited numbers of silk screened posters but would only sign a few. Today, only the signed copies are worth anything in art markets. Warhol would also place ads inviting people to bring any household object to his studio so that he could then “certify your WARHOL WORK" with his signature. Thus creating value out of the otherwise mundane.

Just like Warhol, CryptoPunks experiments with tokenizing otherwise seemingly valueless images. With Warhol, investors wanted the artist’s signature proving that the art was authentic. Similarly, it’s the Ethereum contract and blockchain address that gives the individual CryptoPunk its value.

Kings of Leon and Marvel artist - NFT art goes mainstream

The non-fungible token art space is burgeoning. On February 28th, Canadian musician Grimes, who has 1.7 million followers on Instagram, auctioned 10 exclusive digital art NFTs. The collection brought in USD5.8 million in 20 minutes. Some of the art also came with accompanying music. Other celebrities, sports stars, entrepreneurs, and VC investors are endorsing NFTs as a groundbreaking technology. Lindsay Lohan is selling NFTs of her paintings, and RIck & Morty creator Justin Rolland has also released an NFT series recently.

Gary Vaynerchuk, popular digital marketing and social media entrepreneur said on Twitter “The creativity coming from artists in the #nft space is extraordinary & so fun to watch. Many will look at this moment from the lens of investing in assets but supporting things you love or collectibles is such a pleasure just like in real life.”

The NFT delivery system has also helped artists who have seen their normal marketplaces be disrupted by Covid-19 lockdowns. José Delbo is an 87-year old Argentine comic book artist best known for his work on the Transformers series for Marvel and the Wonder Woman series for DC. Delbo began exploring NFT marketplaces as a way to sell his art after the comic book conventions where he would set up sales booths were cancelled.

Delbo created his first NFT artwork in August 2020 and has since collaborated with crypto-centric artists like Trevor Jones and PRIMAL CYPHER who have helped digitize and tokenize his print work. He told Decrypt media “Everything seems to be moving more and more digital and art is often about evolving So this is a way of me evolving even this late in my career.”Source: makersplace.com

The above piece is Delbo’s most recent work available for purchase on Makersplace. It is called “A WH1SPER OF DEATH” and it has been on sale for 103 days. The most recent bid for the piece was USD10,846.08.

On March 3rd, Rolling Stone announced that Kings of Leon will release an album as an NFT. The band will be dropping three types of tokens as part of a series called “NFT yourself”. One is a special album package, another offers live show perks like front row seats for life and the third is audiovisual - similar to the Grimes offerings. The NFTs will be developed by Yellowheart.

“Over the last 20 years — two lost decades — we’ve seen the devaluation of music,” Yellowheart CEO Joseph Katz told Rolling Stone. “Music has become great at selling everything except music. There’s been a race to the bottom where, for as little money as possible, you have access to all of it. Previously, it cost $20 to go get one song.” Katz believes the pro-rata artist payment model of Spotify and other subscription services has hurt musicians, and that there is still a market for consumers who actually want to own music.

bravenewcoin.com