Non-fungible tokens are one of the hottest investments. While the market kept crashing in January the volume for NFT trades rose. Last weekend was a historic moment for LarvaLabs CryptoPunks, one of the most renowned NFT collections on Ethereum.

Who bought the most expensive punk? And is it really worth it or just a hype that will fade out like any other rally?

The most expensive punk

It was in December 2021 when CryptoPunk #4156 sold for $10,26 million and set a new record in US-Dollar value. If measured in ETH #3100 and #7804 were still on top with a volume of 4.200 Ether each. Both sold in March 2021.

With 8.000 ETH and a corresponding Dollar value of $23,7 million, CryptoPunk #5822 became the undisputable champion and the most expensive piece of the collection. The buyer is well known in the broader crypto community. Deepak Thapliyal is the CEO of Chain and celebrated his purchase on Twitter with the rest of the world.

This specific Punk is a so-called alien and only 9 out of 10.000 CryptoPunks are sharing this trait. Needless to say, each NFT becomes more valuable if one or more traits are considered to be rare among all pieces in the collection. While the rarest pieces are scoring multimillion-dollar prices, the floor price for a common CryptoPunk is way lower. At the time of writing the lowest price punk is available for 72,5 ETH which is still a nice chunk of money.

High demand for premium NFTs

The crypto market kept tanking in January but the NFT market kept booming despite the fact that the price for Ethereum dropped. The fact that the new record was set after Ethereum was rejected at a price level of $3.300 pays testimony to the high demand for premium NFTs.

Punk #5822 is not the most expensive NFT, but the total value of all sales of this collection alone already surpassed $2 billion. It seems that many investors share the idea that a view select collections can maintain their value despite uncertain conditions in the crypto market.

That being said, many investors are speculating to become early adopters of future high-value collections. With OpenSea still being the biggest marketplace that runs on top of Ethereum, many competitors like Tezos, Solana, and Cardano are creating new markets and opportunities. This gives reason to believe that the NFT boom will continue in the near future.