A trader who purchased a rare CryptoPunk last year sold the NFT on Thursday for a $10 million loss.

The trader bought CryptoPunk 3100 for $16 million in March last year. The sale became the third-highest price paid for a CryptoPunk in the collection’s history.

CryptoPunks are a collection of 10,000 unique, pixel art pictures created by the development studio Larva Labs. Each image is linked to a non-fungible token, or NFT.

This particular CryptoPunk is highly coveted because it is one of only nine with the rare alien trait. For NFTs, rarity is often correlated to higher prices in a given collection.

The sale comes as prices of high-value NFTs return to earth after Bitcoin soared above $100,000 late last year.

At the time, CryptoPunks sold for a minimum of $158,000. Now, the cheapest examples from the collection only sell for around $65,000 — a 58% drop.

The identity of the latest buyer remains unknown.

Subjective value

It’s hard to estimate the value of rare CryptoPunks like 3100.

Sales are infrequent, and, just like in the art world, value is highly subjective.

When CryptoPunk 3100 was previously bought in March 2024, it wasn’t the only alien CryptoPunk sale that happened around that time.

The same month, alien CryptoPunk 7804 sold for $16.5 million, while another alien, 635, sold for $12.5 million in April.

The recent sale of 3100 may impact the perceived value of other alien CryptoPunks. At just over $6 million, it’s the lowest price paid for an alien CryptoPunk since the collection exploded in popularity in early 2021.

Before the sale, NFT Valuations, a site that uses AI to price rare NFTs, estimated the value of CryptoPunk 3100 at around $8 million.

“Hard to say who made the better move, the seller who walked away with $6 million, or the buyer,” said one NFT collector on X.

CryptoPunks legacy

The CryptoPunks NFTs were launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio on Ethereum.

The collection soared in popularity during the NFT craze of 2021, with the cheapest examples from the collection selling for upwards of $415,000 each at the peak.

In March 2022, Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, announced it had acquired the CryptoPunks rights from Larva Labs for an undisclosed sum.

CryptoPunks are viewed as a sign of status in the crypto industry, particularly among the Ethereum community.

Many celebrities and crypto influencers own CryptoPunks, including rapper Jay-Z, billionaire Mark Cuban, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Tim Craig is Inside Solana’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.