On February 23, the auction house Sotheby’s will offer its first-ever dedicated live evening auction for NFTs. 104 tokens of the early NFT originators CryptoPunks will be available for purchase in a single-lot sale.
On its website, Sotheby’s notes that the auction and an exhibition that will take place on February 18-23 “will bring together the physical and digital in an unprecedented showcase for NFTs and digital art with a presentation on par with the most significant and high-profile sales for Contemporary and Modern art.”
It’s unclear what that means and Sotheby’s didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it probably translates into the NFTs being displayed on a big screen.
At Sotheby’s announced on Twitter, the auction will also include a “VIP Punk Dinner” and a “Live Auction Party” with Seedphrase DJ.
What Are Cryptopunks, Anyway?
Created by the company Larva Labs, CryptoPunks began in 2017, with 10,000 unique collectible characters and the concurrent proof of ownership stored on the Ethereum blockchain that makes them all unique and non-fungible and all that.
Originally the CryptoPunks were free to be claimed by anyone with an Ethereum wallet, but now they’re for sale on the Ethereum marketplace.
In a twist that reveals just how chaotic the blockchain and crypto world can be, CryptoPunks were out of circulation for years because of a bug that caused the token “to be allocated to the buyer instead of the seller when a purchase was made. In other words, a buyer was immediately refunded for their purchase and was able to keep the Punk.” Oops!
But now those punks have been outfitted with ERC-721 tokens, so they can be traded on the marketplace. As Larva Labs has explained "V1 Punks are not a derivative but are in fact the 'original/classic' Cryptopunks." But how can a digital file truly be original after being passed around so much? Well, that’s the magic of NFTs for you.
Analog Punks Fire Back
Considering NFT’s current controversial reputation, it was only a matter of time before old-school punks announced their displeasure with the phrase “CryptoPunks,” and no one did so more memorably than the music producer Steve Albini, producer of punk classics by the likes of Nirvana, Pixies, Jawbreaker and his own band Big Black.
