CryptoPunk at number 7523 was auctioned Thursday for $ 11.7 million in New York at Sotheby’s. – Cindy Ord / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA
The image of a pixelated digital figure with a blue face, stamped with the popular new certificate of authenticity “NFT”, was sold on Thursday for 11.7 million dollars in New York at Sotheby’s.
CryptoPunk at number 7523 belongs to a series of creatures designed in 2017 by the young American company Larva Labs, whose importance was major in the development of “NFT”.
A certificate of authenticity associated with each Cryptopunk
Each image roughly represents a pixelated face, reminiscent of crossed characters in 80s video games, with a set of characteristics that make it unique. Every Cryptopunk has been associated with a theoretically inviolable certificate of authenticity, the NFT, for non-fungible token or non-fungible token, a term which means that it is unique.
It is this NFT, based on so-called blockchain technology, which has caused the digital objects market to explode over the past six months, because many collectors are now reassured about the guarantee of ownership of a work.
The second most expensive NFT in history
The 7523 is the only character, among the 10,000 CryptoPunks created by Larva Labs, to wear a surgical mask, which made him a particularly prized item. The CryptoPunk 7523 is now the second most expensive NFT in history behind the digital artwork “Everydays” by artist Beeple, which sold for $ 69.3 million in mid-March.
Sotheby’s has revealed that the buyer was entrepreneur Shalom McKenzie, the largest shareholder in online betting operator DraftKings, whose fortune is estimated at several hundred million dollars.
After a surge from January to April, average NFT prices and the number of sales slowed noticeably, with many heralding the explosion of a speculative bubble. The amount of transactions over the past 30 days rose from $ 248 million in early June to $ 73 million on Thursday, according to data from NonFungible.com.