Alien Cryptopunks Collectible Sold for $761.888

A digital collectible in the Cryptopunks series with the alien characteristic sold on Saturday for $761.888 after a bidding war between potential buyers. Punk 2890 is one of the nine alien Cryptopunks, and it's the first one changing owners in three years. This is by far the biggest Cryptopunks sale thus far.

Yesterday the original owner suddenly put his alien Punk 2890 up for sale. He wanted to receive 825 ETH ($997.779) for his digital collectible. However, ultimately he settled for 605 ETH. Three and a half years ago the seller acquired the punk for 8 ETH, which was $2127 at that time.

The alien characteristic is one of the most rare features in the Cryptopunks series. For example, there are 24 apes and 88 zombies. Apes and zombies have been changing hands like cupcakes recently. This month an ape sold for 150 thousand dollars, while zombies have had the spotlight for quite some time now.

The buyer clearly wants to stay anonymous. The alien Cryptopunk is stored in a new wallet. However, funds for the acquisition came from a variety of wallets. Some of these wallets have been acquiring Cryptopunks over the past weeks, while also buying lots of Chromie Squiggles from Art Blocks. The buyer seems to be someone who prefers on-chain digital collectibles. Another connected wallet contains 16.666 B20 tokens, and more on-chain art. FlamingoDAO, a decentralized organization with NFT collectors, claims the purchase on Twitter.

Why are Cryptopunks so valuable?

CryptoPunks is a crypto art initiative that generated ten thousand different 24×24 punk-looking avatars. There are a few rares ones, like apes, zombies and an alien. Besides being a digital collectible, the project doesn’t offer any additional usage. However, Cryptopunks are often part of digital art galleries in virtual worlds like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland.

We can’t say that Cryptopunks are technically advanced non-fungible tokens. However, it’s the first collectible art project ever that used the Ethereum blockchain to mint collectibles. Because of their historical significance, Cryptopunks are valuable digital assets. There are only ten thousand punks on the market. Rarity and scarcity push up the value.