CryptoPunks: The near-perfect crypto/NFT investment that nobody knows about..
Firstly, what the heck is an ‘NFT’?
This article is aimed for those who already have an intermediate level of crypto knowledge but for those who are new to the space here is a great article giving an in depth NFT breakdown, https://medium.com/multi-io/defi-explained-nft-breakdown-a0d564704810.
I know a lot of people even within the crypto community remain skeptical about how and why NFTs, digital art and digital collectibles carry value, but this is an easy project to see the potential upside.
Why/how do CryptoPunks have value?
1. Collectable!
CryptoPunks are the ‘First NFT’ set. They are made up of 10,000 all unique images which each vary in rarity according to the punks given attributes.
If the NFT space continues to grow, the collectability category of ‘first’ will undoubtedly grow with it. Even if ETH were to fall out of favor, the Cryptopunks would still hold value as the OG of NFTs.
2. Store of Value!
The Cryptopunks supply is fully diluted with a hard cap of only 10,000 punks.
This is just 4.7% of Bitcoins 21,000,000 fully diluted supply, without even considering that each bitcoin can be divided down to 100,000,000 ‘Satoshis’.
3. Art!
‘Art’ is of course subjective, but these are much loved pieces of art to those active in the CryptoPunks discord group.
4. History!
The NFT space is now beginning to boom and is showing mind boggling growth potential. If this trend continues then the project to start it all will forever be etched into blockchain history. CryptoPunks are even given inspiration credit in the ERC-721 white paper!
5. ETH!
Punks are bought and sold with ETH, so on top of points 1–4, you still get your ETH gains.
Why is the oldest NFT in existence relatively unknown?
When the punks were given out on June 23, 2017 they were nothing more than a weird ‘almost ERC-20’ token that represented an 8-bit punk portrait. They were intrinsically given zero value as they were given away free and at the time carried no value for being the ‘first NFT’ while also being the only NFT.
Predating all NFT marketplaces (and the ERC-721 standard itself) meant they could only be bought and sold on the larvalabs.com/cryptopunks website.
They weren’t a game and the concept of digital Art was unheard of at the time, therefore they were pretty well forgotten about until recently when wrappedpunks.com/ allowed for them to be converted to the ERC-721 NFT token standard.
‘Wrappedpunks’ can now be traded on marketplaces such as app.rarible.com/ and opensea.io/ and have since been gaining the punks more attention (and value). Although, these secondary marketplaces are not well set up for Cryptopunks (yet) and with only 996 (still mostly dormant) owners holding the entire set, they remain quite obscure to owners and collectors alike.
What are they worth?
The highest price paid for a Punk currently sits at 185E whilst ‘floor Punks’ (punks with the most common attributes) are currently listed at 3.5E, with only 20 punks offered for under 5E.
How to buy/sell/HODL?
Buying/selling: I believe the best place to buy/sell is from the original Larvalabs.com site with Metamask.
There are no scams on larvalabs and its the easiest place to sort through the different Punks and their rarities. This helps to give some ideas on what is a ‘floor punk’ vs what is top shelf.
**Be careful about scam punks, especially on Rarible.**
(The punk market is immature, some people put value on looks, some like rarity, some like hidden traits or number of traits, etc etc. This means there are still bargains around, but if it seems too good to be true then it probably is!)
Storing: Punks can be bought and stored with Metamask and HODLed on your Ledger.
CryptoPunks are a milti-point asset, historic, collectible, art with an un-divisible hard cap of only 10,000 which is why I see them as being the perfect store-of-value/investment for your ETH.
The ‘floor punks’ have gained 30x value within the past 18 months, with only 580~ up for sale at the time of writing, awareness picking up, the greater NFT space booming, plus the entire crypto space booming that figure is looking only like speeding up.
