30/11/2021 The CryptoPunk NFT that sold for $532 million. Sort of

On paper, it's the most expensive NFT sale of all time. The only problem? The buyer and seller are the same person.

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CryptoPunk #9998, part of a collection of 10,000 NFTs, "sold" for $530 million on Thursday.

OpenSea/User 0xef764bac8a438e7e498c2e5fccf0f174c3e3f8db

What's the most expensive NFT ever sold? It depends. Officially, it's Beeple's Everydays, a collage of digital art that sold atChristie's auction for $69 million. Then there's the case of an NFT that sold for $532 million in October. As is often the case with NFTs and cryptocurrency though, it's complicated.

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The NFT in question is a CryptoPunk, parta set of 10,000 NFTsthat are some of the first to ever be created. Being the OG NFT collection, these are costly. They usually sell for between $350,000 and $500,000, though some fetch millions.

Whoever is behind this particular transaction, however, they bought the Cryptopunk from themselves. Like cryptocurrency, NFTs are held in digital wallets. There's no limit to how many wallets one person can create. This person transferred the NFT from Wallet A to Wallet B. Then, Wallet C bought the NFT for $532 million from Wallet B -- and immediately transferred it back to Wallet A.

Why use three wallets instead of just simply selling it from one wallet to another? It's because the buyer didn't pay for the transaction himself but instead was loaned the money from others via a "flash loan." Flash loans are a complicated decentralized finance tool, but the gist of it is they allow you to loan huge sums of cryptocurrency onlyifthe criteria of a smart contract are met. Imagine if you would buying a $1 million house using a loan, but only if you already had another buyer lined up, who was willing to pay enough for you to make a profit and pay back interest from the lenders. This person did that, except he was both the buyer and the seller.

NFTs, am I right?

Twitter and Discord, the platforms where most NFT discourse happens, quickly discovered the sale and speculated on the motives behind it. The smoke consensus is that it was a publicity stunt, with the owner probably trying to drive up the price of his CryptoPunk.

There are broadly two types of art NFTs. One type is a one-of-its-kind, where an artist creates a piece of digital art and then sells it, just like what happens in real-world art sales. Then there are NFT collections, like Cryptopunks. These are when artists and developers create many -- usually 10,000 -- NFTs that have the same template with different characteristics. TheBored Ape Yacht Club, for instance, features 10,000 apes all wearing different articles of clothing, with different backgrounds and facial expressions. The rarer the properties, the more valuable the NFT -- think Pokemon cards. In the case of Bored Apes, the "floor" price is $190,000 but rare ones sometimes sell for millions. (An auction of 101recently went for $24 million.)

CryptoPunksis considered the original NFT collection, starting in 2017 when much of the world was just beginning its infatuation with Bitcoin. The highestlegitimate sale for a CryptoPunk is $11.7 million.

Arts

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/the-cryptopunk-nft-that-sold-for-532-million-sort-of/

Interesting NFTs
Pending Gerbil #10/23
The #PendingGerbil drew his breath nervously. Fail Dropped Dropped and Replaced There were nothing in this world he feared more. He looked at the chords that crossed the abyss in front of him. They were loaded with pending gerbils, clinging for their life. No open space to be seen. The world machine creaked under the load. As the wheel turned and settled on a new block with a load bang, the chords vibrated, and short shrieks were heard as tired paws lost their grip and the gerbils fell into oblivion. #PendingGerbil closed his eyes, sent a short prayer to @VitalikButerin, and took the leap. Written by: @Werekitty1 Pending Gerbil is a very special collaboration with NonFunGerbils (https://nonfungerbils.com/pendinggerbil)
CryptoKitties
Uh, hi! I'm Kitty #285741. All you need to know about me is I hate salad with a passion. It's not common knowledge, but my ancestry connects me to Marie Antoinette. I like your face.
Forms of Love
The ever changing piece, that took you to understand the 10 forms of love. attach string to each of it,connect and try to understand it. how do you perceive it? it's up to you, it's part of me but also part of you at the same time. just don't use logic too much, we never live there anyway from the start.
#63289
By OthersideDeployer
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.