Yet another CryptoPunk has sold for an astonishing sum: On Thursday, an ultra-rare Alien Punk from the NFT collection traded hands for $12.38 million worth of Ethereum (ETH). Punk #635, one of just nine Alien Punks in the influential 10,000-piece Ethereum NFT collection, sold for 4,000 ETH this morning. The sale was facilitated by crypto art brokerage Fountain, with the piece going to an anonymous collector who has yet to reveal their identity. The eye-popping trade comes just weeks after two other Alien Punks sold for near-record shattering amounts. In early March, an anonymous crypto trader bought Punk #3100 for The largest CryptoPunks sale of all time took place in NFT heyday of early 2022, when a crypto startup CEO purchased yet another Alien Punk—#5822—for 8,000 ETH, worth CryptoPunk 635, the Alien originally owned by Larva Labs and sold at the Christie’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in May 2021, has just been acquired by an anonymous collector in a deal brokered by Fountain. We’re honored to have played a small role in this sale. Congratulations… pic.twitter.com/glisy3MZpv— Fountain (@Fountainxyz) April 25, 2024While those Punk transactions, and today’s, rank among the most expensive NFT sales of all time, they still pale in comparison to the all-time leader: “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” an on-chain work by the artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann that sold for The recent resurgence of mind-boggling price tags for CryptoPunk NFTs, however, appears reserved for that collection alone. CryptoPunks, arguably the first NFT collection to attract substantial value and relevance after their Other once-coveted profile picture (PFP) collections have struggled to recapture dominance since the collapse of the NFT market in mid-2022. The Other collections that previously defined the NFT landscape, like Edited by Andrew Hayward
