The Most Expensive CryptoPunk Was Just Sold for $23.7M

NFTs continue to attract attention for high-end transactions, as this time it was a CryptoPunk that smashed its previous record in terms of ETH and USD value. Deepak Thapliyal, Chain’s CEO, splashed nearly $24 million to purchase #5822.

Developed in 2017, CryptoPunks are considered one of the OGs in the non-fungible token space. They’re a collection of 10,000 algorithmically generated 24*24, 8-bit-style tokenized and pixelated art images.
The explosion of the NFT industry last year resulted in numerous CryptoPunks transactions worth millions of dollars. It consists of different designs, such as humans, aliens, apes, zombies, and others.
The CEO of the blockchain infrastructure company Chain – Deepak Thapliyal – just set the new record for the highest amount paid for a CryptoPunk.
Thapliyal posted on Twitter that he had acquired CryptoPunk #5822 for 8,000 ETH (worth about $23.7 million).
Later on, Chain’s CEO explained that he was able to use leverage through CompoundFinance to purchase the digital art.
It’s worth noting that Thapliyal bought the rarest avatar kind of CryptoPunks – alien – as there’re only nine such NFTs out of the 10,000.

Thanks to @CompoundFinance I am able to still HODL #ETH while buying this. Basically Long’d ETH to punk-in 👽. #DeFi FTW

— Deepak.eth ⛓ (@dt_chain) February 12, 2022

Aside from crypto community insiders, CryptoPunks have attracted prominent names outside of the industry as well. As reported last year, the multinational financial service giant Visa bought one for $160,000.