The Most Expensive CryptoPunk Was Just Sold for $23.7M

NFTs continue to attract attention for high-end transactions, as this time it was a CryptoPunk that smashed its previous record in terms of ETH and USD value. Deepak Thapliyal, Chain’s CEO, splashed nearly $24 million to purchase #5822.

• Developed in 2017, CryptoPunks are considered one of the OGs in the non-fungible token space. They’re a collection of 10,000 algorithmically generated 24*24, 8-bit-style tokenized and pixelated art images.
• The explosion of the NFT industry last year resulted in numerous CryptoPunks transactions worth millions of dollars. It consists of different designs, such as humans, aliens, apes, zombies, and others.
• The CEO of the blockchain infrastructure company Chain – Deepak Thapliyal – just set the new record for the highest amount paid for a CryptoPunk.
• Thapliyal posted on Twitter that he had acquired CryptoPunk #5822 for 8,000 ETH (worth about $23.7 million).
• Later on, Chain’s CEO explained that he was able to use leverage through CompoundFinance to purchase the digital art.
• It’s worth noting that Thapliyal bought the rarest avatar kind of CryptoPunks – alien – as there’re only nine such NFTs out of the 10,000.

Thanks to @CompoundFinance I am able to still HODL #ETH while buying this. Basically Long’d ETH to punk-in . #DeFi FTW

— Deepak.eth (@dt_chain) February 12, 2022

• Aside from crypto community insiders, CryptoPunks have attracted prominent names outside of the industry as well. As reported last year, the multinational financial service giant Visa bought one for $160,000.