Storytime!
This morning Cryptopunk 3100 sold for 4500 ETH ($16M) which is a massive deal on it's own, but this punk has an interesting and sometimes scandalous story around it, so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about some of the stand out moments 3100 has experienced over the last (almost) 7 years. Lets start at the beginning. Straybits famously claimed Cryptopunk 3100 (along with most of the other aliens) on June 10th, 2017. This was within the first 24 hours after Larva Labs released them. The claim, of course, was free. As is well known now those claimed punks had a bug which prevented them from being sold, and a few days later on June 23rd Larva Labs airdropped the updated Cryptopunks to all the claimers. Straybits received the new 3100, and then sold it a couple weeks later for 8 ETH (just over $2k at the time). The buyer would hold 3100 until March 11, 2021 when they would accept a bid for 4200 ETH ($7.58M) which was the highest Cryptopunk sale ever at the time. That anon buyer is the one who sold it this morning, all that history is onchain and can be seen here.
All that is exciting, but things get a little crazy after that. In June 2021, a few months after the 4200 ETH sale, an artist named Ryder Ripps would mint a copy of 3100 on Foundation and publish a (now deleted) explanation saying this was a conceptual piece questioning what it is you own when you buy an NFT. This would sell a few days later for just over 2 ETH, check out the names in that bid history! Just after the sale Larva Labs served Foundation a DMCA takedown notice and they delisted his 3100 copy. Ripps would then mint and sell the DMCA notice for just over 1 ETH. It's currently for sale for 3.99 ETH. Ripps would appeal the DMCA, and his 3100 copy token would be reinstated a few weeks later. This was long before the RR/BAYC drama which would later ensue, though it might have been the spark of the idea, and it was directly related to controversy at the time within the Cryptopunks community about who owned the IP to the punks that would eventually lead to Punk4156 selling his Cryptopunk ape and launching Nouns DAO in effort to promote CC0.
I recognize that in light of everything that would happen after this with Ripps and Yuga this bit of the story is something some people don't like, but historically I do think it contributed to Larva Labs selling Cryptopunks to Yuga Labs the following year, and is therefor an important part of the story of 3100, and some of the legacy that the new buyer just inherited. I wrote about some of this back when it happened.
But that's not all! In January 2022, a dev called FrankNFT would release a wrapper allowing the bugged originally claimed Cryptopunks (now known as v1) to be sold safely. Straybits still owned the V1 punk, and when he started wrapping them an OTC deal was reached with fellow punk claimer and legendary collector Mr703 for the V1 version of 3100, which he held quietly until wrapping it in Nov 2023.
Anyone who has followed my writings on this knows I'm an advocate for pairing up V1/V2 Cryptopunk tokens. These were "born together" so to speak and are both important parts of the story, and I think the most ideal solution is that they remain together in the same wallet owned by the same person whenever possible. These two tokens have been separated since July 2017, I think it would be incredibly exciting to see them reunited in this next cycle. What a cool chapter that would be to add to the story. I'm hoping we learn who the buyer of 3100 is, and excited to see where this leads next.
(This post was originally posted on Xwitter, and can easily be shared there as well)
