Traditional auction house Christie's is now auctioning CryptoPunks after getting involved with non-fungible tokens through Beeple’s $69 million digital artwork, the third most expensive work by a living artist. And much like the last time, Christie’s will accept bids and payment in Ether (ETH). Christie’s noted,

“For the first time, 5,184 pixels’ worth of a revolutionary NFT project will go up for auction at a traditional auction house, courtesy of the project creators and pioneers themselves.”

Nine rare CryptoPunks from Larva Labs will be sold on 13 May at Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale. Trader CL of eGirl Capital commented,

“Crypto culture going mainstream, all digital collectibles that are first of its kinds will do extremely well digital world repricing.”

The oldest NFT project on Ethereum blockchain, CryptoPunks, was created by New York-based software company Larva Labs, founded by Matt Hall and John Watkinson in 2017.

CryptoPunks are a limited collection of 24×24, 8-bit-style pixel art. While anyone can see it and save a copy of the image from Larva Labs’ website, there will only ever be one rightful owner, verifiable by the blockchain technology.

As of early this month, over 8,000 sales had been recorded in the previous 12 months, with an average sale price of 15.45 Ether (about $30,400). The total value of all sales is 127,360 Ether (more than $250 million).

However, while the involvement of such a big and old auction house is all good for getting mainstream attraction with others like Sotheby’s also coming in, given the high markup these auction house charges, the crypto industry needs to do it in-house.

also christie's hosting NFT auctions is fun and all but like guys… really?

these guys take a huge fkn cut for what? keeping the NFT safe? transporting? finding and connecting buyers?

stop being enthralled by legacy institutions when we have such better stuff arleady availabl

— loomdart CFA, MBA, ChEA, FRM, NGMI, HFSP, TLDR (@loomdart) April 9, 2021

While Mark Cuban argues that these auction houses bring in customers with big bags, the biggest bid on Beeple was made by the crypto market participants.

Given that Bitcoin is just over a decade old only and NFTs only exploded into the scene just this year, the market may need a bit of time and more players to expand the NFT sector and make it economical.

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