CryptoPunk Prices Surge as Bitcoin Gains Help Pump NFT Market

CryptoPunks reestablished a floor price of $100,000 this week amid major gains for Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market, marking a resurgence for the prominent NFT project following months of diminished demand.

This marks the first time the CryptoPunks floor—aka the price of the cheapest asset listed on a marketplace—has been above $100,000 since June according to data from NFT Floor Price.

The rise in floor price has been buoyed by a sharp increase in trading volume for the Ethereum NFT collection, which traded more than $14.5 million in the last week and registered more sales in the last four days than any other similar period in the last year as reported by pseudonymous analyst Punk9059.

CryptoPunks trading volume jumped by 730% over the past week compared to the previous span, per data from CryptoSlam. Broadly, the NFT market saw a 95% week-over-week jump in trading volume to $163 million worth.

A portion of that increased volume can be attributed to new entrants entering the CryptoPunks ecosystem in the last week, bringing the unique owner count to an all-time high of 3,793, per on-chain data sourced from block explorer Etherscan.

The growing unique holder count bucks a trend for the collection, which was initially claimed for free by a small group of early adopters of Ethereum and NFTs, creating a concentrated distribution of holders.

Why would new entrants be looking at Punks now? Some buyers may be seeking to level up their NFT status thanks to newfound wealth from the cryptocurrency market, which CoinGecko indicates gained more than $500 billion in total market cap in the last seven days.

One such example of that phenomenon comes from the pseudonymous Wheresrare on Twitter (aka X), who claims they were able to purchase CryptoPunk #2965 for approximately $117,000 due to gains from “one good trade.”

“I knew what I had to do,” they added, referring to buying the so-called blue chip NFT, while also thanking fellow degens in the crypto trading trenches.

CryptoPunks is one of the oldest and most notable NFT collections. The 10,000 piece collection was initially claimable for free on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017, later growing to an all-time high floor price of more than $400,000 in November 2021.

It’s widely seen as a status symbol for die-hard crypto users, and flashy sales numbers have helped boost its status as a digital luxury as well—with five total on-chain sales above $10 million each, and more than 50 sales above $1 million historically.

Punks have gained notoriety beyond crypto as well, aided by notable celebrities like Jay-Z and Steve Aoki utilizing them as profile pictures on social media. Despite the NFT mania waning from the 2021 highs, Jay-Z still reps Punk #6095 for his 2.9 million X followers.

The CryptoPunk traits inspired those of many other NFT collections, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which has historically rivaled CryptoPunks for the most valuable NFT collection from the profile picture (PFP) category. The Bored Ape Yacht Club parent company, Yuga Labs, eventually acquired the CryptoPunks collection from its creators in March 2022

Edited by Andrew Hayward