NFT Collectible Projects Bloom into Billion-Dollar Markets
Unbelievable Projects Soar to New Heights from CryptoPunks, BAYC, Cool Cats, to Ether Rocks and more!
The CryptoPunks Marathon
Collectible projects today are proliferating like crazy. They seem to be the next wave of Crypto assets to watch. The 10,000 unique collectible characters named Cryptopunks are the earliest example of NFTs.
The collection of these 24x24, 8-bit-style pixel art images of misfits, generated algorithmically, were created by the founders of Larva Labs, Matt Hall and John Watkinson, in early 2017. By June, they had created 10,000 characters in the nascent Ethereum blockchain with different personalities, styles, and accessories, with rarer types mixed in, including apes, zombies, and aliens.
The new idea came at the height of the crypto wave in 2017 and pre-dated the NFT CryptoKitties platform by months and the NBA Top Shot by years.
Currently, the lowest priced Punk available is 52 ETH or $168,303, while the highest priced ones sell for millions. Only recently, a collection of nine Cryptopunks were sold for $16.9 million at Christie's 21st Century Evening Sale.
Now the owner of a rare Cryptopunk (3100) with a headband accessory wants to sell the unique NFT for 35,000 Ethereum (ETH) or $91.64 million. Cryptopunk 3100 is rare because it is one out of only nine Alien punks. If it’s sold for the desired amount, it would even surpass the most expensive NFT sold to date, which is Beeple’s “Everyday: The First 5000 Days”, which sold for 26,508.809 ETH or $69.3 million.
According to researchers at the Institute for the Future at the University of Nicosia, the value of all 10,000 CryptoPunks, the first and most famous NFT and Ethereum-based ecosystem (ENP) is now over $1.95B (€1.60B).
It is currently the top NFT project surpassing even the likes of Art Blocks, Meebits, The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Hashmasks. In fact, Cryptopunks has done two times the sales that Art Blocks saw last week, and Cryptopunks' seven-day stats outpace the latter's eight NFT project sales combined.
Shrewdness of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Rises Above the Competition
Whilst the NFT market has raked in millions, many NFT projects like Cryptopunks, Meebits and the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) have outperformed the competition. BAYC NFT, which is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs, has recently witnessed an exponential growth of sales just below the Cryptopunks, amounting to $49.5 million last week alone. Each Bored Ape is unique and programmed with more than 170 possible features, including expression, headwear, clothing and more.
BAYC also launched "The Bathroom," which contains a canvas that is only available for wallets with at least one ape. It lets ape-holders paint a pixel on the bathroom wall every fifteen minutes.
In addition, BAYC's official Twitter account revealed that the project donated 66.45 Ether to the New York-based nonprofit Orangutan Outreach .
TIME Teams up with Cool Cats
Not far behind in the NFT race is The Cool Cats. Like Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the project recently issued 10,000 limited edition NFT Cats. Furthermore, the NFT project teamed up with the company TIME On August 14 to mint 400 NFT pieces featuring the cats reading TIME magazine. According to the recent announcement, the collection will include 100x Elu’s cat, 100x Clons’ cat, 100x Xtremetom’s cat, and 100x Lynoid’s cat.
“Wow, what a crazy TIME to be alive. We are honored and privileged to announce a limited edition drop with one of the most iconic and well-respected companies out there, TIME magazine. The president of TIME, Keith Grossman, likes the cats so much that he suggested we do a collaboration together! As Keith mentioned in this tweet — cats have been in TIME’s DNA.,” said the team in a blog post.
Rocking the NFT Market
In a very unlikely event, a digital piece of rock has broken many records on the NFT market. EtherRock, which was one of the first crypto collectable NFT-type projects on the Ethereum blockchain shortly after CryptoPunks, has sold for an astonishing $250k.
These rare 'pet rocks' are more than just a digital image or "Rock.jpg." with only 100 of these available in total. In the first three years of the NFT project, only 20 Ether Rocks were bought, each minted in a unique color but identical in shape and size.
The lowest listed price for a single EtherRock is 95.2 ETH or about $300,000, and the highest is EtherRock #61, which is relisted by its owner for 9001 ETH, equating to $28m on current ETH pricing.
While some might consider it as hitting rock bottom in NFT art, others find it quite amusing. “This is the stupidest or the most incredible decision of our lives,” said one buyer of an EtherRock.
As mentioned in previous newsletters, we at NFT Art Source continue to watch the NFT market and attempt to keep you abreast of new trends within the space. In this week’s article, we highlight a few of the projects that are witnessing new highs and intense interest. The collectible phenomenon is getting an enormous amount of attention and it seems that new projects are launching daily. Truthfully, there are so many, it is difficult to keep pace and sort through which projects will ultimately survive and which have merit. We will continue to research and promise to keep you ‘in the know’ about exciting concept launches. Stay tuned for next week’s continued investigation of new and interesting finds.
Stay Curious!
~NFT Art Source