Sotheby’s Withdraws Auction Of 104 CryptoPunks At Seller’s Request

The event called Punk It!, was held in a crowded salesroom at Sotheby’s Upper East Side headquarters, was withdrawn 23 minutes after the sale. The opening bid was set at $14 million

A selection of a collection of 104 CryptoPunks that were to be sold at Sotheby's on Thursday. Image: Courtesy of Sotheby's

New Delhi: Non-fungible tokens or NFTs, which were supposed to go under the hammer on February 23 (Wednesday), was withdrawn 23 minutes after the sale, according to reports.

The event called Punk It!, which Sotheby’s, the leading auction house, in New York was referring as the “the first NFT and cultural event of its kind”, would have seen a single-lot sale of 104 CryptoPunks; a single-lot sale of 104 CryptoPunks acquired simultaneously in a singular blockchain transaction by anonymous collector ‘0x650d’.

According to reports, the event scheduled for 7 pm on February 23. The auction was held in a crowded salesroom at Sotheby’s Upper East Side headquarters and live-streamed across the globe, with almost 500 people tuning in on YouTube. The opening bid was set at $14 million. Typically, the lots are withdrawn last minute when there’s no interest. It happens regularly and is a strategy to avoid having the artwork flop publicly, which can dampen the artist’s market and “burn” the artwork.

The leading auction house then cancelled the live auction at the request of the consignor.

nvm, decided to hodl https://t.co/WdQ5H7I0fl

— 0x650d (@0x650d) February 24, 2022

Sotheby’s tweeted, “Following discussions with the consignor, tonight's Punk It sale has been withdrawn. Thank you to our panelists, guests, and viewers for joining us.”

Further details on why the consignor decided to withdraw were not immediately available.

The sale was to begin after a panel discussion on the history of NFTs and CryptoPunks, and before a crowd of onlookers that was said to include a range of traditional and digital collectors. An announcement encouraged those in attendance to enjoy an afterparty at the auction house’s headquarters.

Larva Labs released the CryptoPunks, a generative creation of 10,000 pixelated characters, in 2017. Since then, they have become some of the most sought-after and expensive NFTs. The consignor acquired all 104 Punks together in a single blockchain transaction; it is one of the largest such groups held by a single wallet, Sotheby’s said, and represents more than one percent of all Punks.

The evening sale was preceded by a lively panel discussion on the history and significance of CryptoPunks. A post-sale party, complete with a DJ and free drinks, proceeded as planned.

The Sotheby’s sale was estimated to achieve $30 million. That’s the highest-value estimate for a digital artwork or NFT offered at auction, according to Sotheby’s—although, digital-art tokens weren’t elevated to the auction block until nearly a year ago with Christie’s sale of Mike Winkelmann’s , or Beeple’s, Everydays: The First 5000 Days.