Are CryptoPunks the Only Blue-Chip NFTs?
Key Insights
- Since going live in 2017, CryptoPunks V2 has accumulated $2.9 billion in volume.
- The collection closely mimics the same characteristics of a physical luxury good–namely Hermès bags.
- As the broader NFT market tumbled, CryptoPunks have maintained a steady floor price in ETH terms.
By now, it is no surprise that NFT volume and users exploded in the 2020 cycle, across all categories. From January 2021 to January 2022, volume on OpenSea increased from $32 million to $15 billion. One of the first NFT collections on Ethereum, CryptoPunks, alone has done $2.9 billion in volume since its launch in June 2017.
Plenty of profile picture (PFP) projects followed Punks, and many derivatives emerged, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, ClayPunks, and SolPunks. CryptoPunks has a better financialization potential as a digital luxury good due to its scarcity, popularity, and age than a majority of other collections.
In the current bear market, NFT volume is down across all chains and marketplaces, but curiously enough, CryptoPunks has stayed at a steady floor price within the current NFT downmarket and maintained its popularity.
Eshita is a Research Analyst at Messari focused on Web3 topics. Previously, she was a Venture Fellow at Bloomberg Beta and prior to that was working on data at Shareworks by Morgan Stanley.