Is Half A Million Dollars Worth for This NFT?

The news that Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have sold for more than $500 million ($53.41 million to be exact) has gone viral on social media. A Twitter bot tracking CryptoPunks sales tweeted that Punk #9998  sold for 124,457.07 Ether (ETH) or $532.414 million on Friday 5:22 AM ET.

Punk #9998, a gray-haired, green-eyed pixel character is one of 10,000 collectible characters created on the Ethereum blockchain. CryptoPanks is one of the most popular NFTs in the world. First launched in June 2017 as one of the first NTFs on the Ethereum blockchain, the CryptoPunks project was developed by American studio Larva Labs.

According to Naimish Sangui, CEO of cryptocurrency media Coin Crunch,  since NFTs have returned to their original wallets, buyers and sellers appear to be the same individual or entity. The identity of the person who performed these operations was not immediately known. To understand how one person was able to conduct this transaction, you need to know the concept of "flash credit" in crypto.

“Term lending means borrowing money and repaying it in one transaction within a  block, and you can finance as much  as you want. There can be multiple transactions in one block, and since Ethereum is a smart contract-based blockchain, one person can execute multiple transactions in one transaction,” Sunbi said.

There are DeFi (Decentralized Funding) projects that offer instant loans. In this case, the individual borrowed more than 124,000 ETH from various sources in a single flash loan, sold the cryptopunk, then repurchased the NFT  to their original account and then repaid the loan. Everything was done in one transaction,” he added. So Punk #9998 is now from the same person you had  before. However, experts say  the person had to pay a transaction fee of about $800 to explore NFTs, and  the price of  digital collectibles has risen.

Also, Punk #9998, which sold for $532.41 million, is not considered a best-selling NFT since the transaction was made in the same wallet. The NFT space skyrocketed earlier this year after digital artist Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple) sold  NFT for $69 million in March 2021.

After Everydays: First 5000 Days Beeple, CryptoPunk #3100, and CryptoPunk #7804 are the most expensive NFTs, selling at $7.58 million and $7.57 million respectively. With the latest sales, Cryptopunk 8857 is the fourth best-selling NFT, beating Beeple's Crossroads, which  sold for $6.6 million.