NFTs Still Booming as Ethereum-Based CryptoPunks Project Hits $1 Billion in Sales

CryptoPunks has become the second collectible NFT project in a month to surge past US$1 billion in sales after Axie Infinity hit the mark on August 8, though OpenSea remains the undisputed market leader with sales of US$3.53 billion.
With the cheapest CryptoPunk now selling for US$445,000, prices are still climbing – as recently as August 28, the floor price for a single CryptoPunk was a comparatively modest US$345,000.

However, neither mark remotely compares to the world record price paid at auction for a single CryptoPunk in June: an astonishing US$11,754,000 for “Covid Alien”, aka CryptoPunk 7523, one of just nine “alien punks” in a series.
A Cool $15M For a Pair of Alien Punks
There are a total of 10,000 CryptoPunks, with no two exactly alike. When launched in 2017 by Larva Labs, original CryptoPunks were made available for free but several have since changed hands for millions of dollars. Two other “alien punks” sold for more than US$7.5 million each, according to CryptoSlam, and seven more have gone for over a million each. In May, a collection of nine CryptoPunks sold for almost US$17 million at Christie’s.

Trading surged to new heights in late July, pushing CryptoPunks’ daily volume up from US$1.8 million to US$41.5 million within a week. Things got even hotter in August. A week ago, CryptoPunks hit a daily sales record of US$101 million when VISA bought one of the Punks, and the project’s total trading volume has increased by 716 percent in the seven days since.