Bidding Open For 5 Extremely Rare ‘CryptoPunks’

Bidding is open for five extremely rare CryptoPunks via Sotheby’s, of the 10,000 created, only 24 were issued in physical as well as digital form and signed by co-creator John Watkinson.

The Cryptopunk History and 5 Prints Up for Sale

The bidding is open up to July 1st, created in 2017 by artists Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the founder of Larva Labs. The CryptoPunks was one of the earliest NFT projects and has pushed the Crypto-Art movement.

10,000 of these works were released for only a small transaction fee, but interest has risen recently. Previously, “Alien” Punk #7523, was sold for a whopping $11.8 million at Sotheby’s, setting a record for a single CryptoPunk sale.

That NFT was acquired by Shalom Meckenzie, the largest shareholder in DraftKings. The 24 signed prints created at the inception of CryptoPunks are rare already, these NFTs are being offered this month, #6347, #770, #872, #1819, #2830, each going for just over 100,000 GBP.

These artworks contain particular characteristics in appearance like black lipstick, green eye shadow, crazy hair, luxurious beard, and police cap. Each of them is accompanied by a wax-sealed envelope, rubber-stamped and containing a “paper wallet”, a mnemonic code that provides access to a unique Ethereum-based token.

Michael Bouhanna, an associate specialist for Sotheby’s, said “In the anti-establishment spirit of the early days of the blockchain movement, the CryptoPunks were conceived as a collection of misfits and non-conformists in an ode to the 1970s London punk scene. And, just as the Punks themselves belong to a movement, so too do those who collect them.

The appeal of CryptoPunks has transcended beyond the world of Crypto-enthusiasts, to ‘traditional’ art lovers too. Here, in this sale, we have a group of unique Punks, each defined by their own eccentric characteristics, made even more special by their accompanying prints. This is where the digital art world meets the traditional.”

Georg Bak, a Swiss curator, and digital art expert, who was the first to exhibit a collection of nine CryptoPunk print editions, said on this, “When I first met John and Matt, they modestly shied away from being called ‘artists’, totally charmed to have been invited to debut their physical Punks as part of the ‘Perfect and Priceless’ exhibition.”

He also said, “Yet though they didn’t perceive themselves as artists at the time, for me, their bold experimentation in this medium immediately drew parallels with past movements, which saw provocative artists revolutionising the art world. Take, for instance, Marcel Duchamp who’s infamously rejected ‘Fountain’ by the Salon of Independent Artists in 1917, simultaneously came to symbolise one of the most shocking moments in art history yet at the same time, the birth of Conceptual Art. Just as revolutionary Duchamp’s urinal was over 100 years ago, the CryptoPunks have propelled the NFT onto a global stage, which continues to shake the art world today.”