CryptoPunk was one of the first non-fungible tokens (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain, released in June 2017.
Recently, several big firms have also started experimenting with NFT space, which exploded earlier this year after digital artist Mike Winkelmann also known as ‘Beeple’ sold an NFT for $69 million in March 2021.
An NFT is a unique digital asset designed to represent ownership of a virtual item such as an image, video, or piece of text, while metaverse refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.
Unlike other digital assets such as Bitcoin, NFTs cannot be exchanged.
Recently, US-based payments firm Visa (NYSE:V) entered the NFT-commerce space with a transaction to buy the CryptoPunk #7610 asset for 49.5 ether, equating to around $150,000.
CryptoPunks are a set of 10,000 pixel-art images, with each being a uniquely generated character made by Larva Labs in 2017. Digital asset platform Anchorage helped Vis acquire CryptoPunk7610.
Visa announced the purchase on Twitter, stating, “Over the last 60 years, Visa has built a collection of historic commerce artifacts — from early paper credit cards to the zip-zap machine.” It said that the company has now entered “a new era of NFT-commerce.”
CryptoPunks are also among the most sought-after NFTs in the world, with two entries in the top-three.
The “Everydays: The first 5000 days" by Beeple, CryptoPunk #3100 and CryptoPunk #7804 were the most expensive NFTs, which were sold for $7.58 million and $7.57 million, respectively.