Gary Vee Pays $3.76M For A CryptoPunk, Adding To His NFT Collection: What Investors Should Know

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee, has been a vocal supporter of the growth of the NFT market for several years. Vee made a large purchase on Friday of one of the most well-known non-fungible token series.

What Happened: Vee purchased CryptoPunk #2140 for $3,764,576 according to a Twitter account that provides information on the series.

Larva Labs launched 10,000 CryptoPunks in 2017, a series of 24x24 pixelated avatar NFTs.

The series is considered one of the first NFT avatar projects and considered by many to be the “holy grail” of the NFT market.

CryptoPunk 2140 is one of 24 “Ape Punks.” The same NFT sold for $1.18 million in March and $731,000 in February.

Vee is listed as the owner of seven CryptoPunks on the Larva Labs site. He spent a reported $4.88 million on the seven Punks with purchases ranging from $42,800 to $773,000 prior to Friday.

Related Link: Exclusive: Gary Vee On Sports Cards Investment Options, What's Ahead For NFTs

Why It’s Important: The purchase by Vee marks one of several on Friday, with several others selling in the five-figure and six-figure range and some receiving bids of more than $1 million.

CryptoPunks are ranked third by dollars on CryptoSlam, a site that tracks top NFT projects. The Punks have had $422.4 million in transaction volume across 14,775 transactions in their lifetime.

CryptoPunks trail only Axie Infinity and NBA Top Shot in lifetime dollar volume at $800.9 million and $665.0 million, respectively. Both those projects have millions of transactions.

Prior to Friday, CryptoPunks had $19.1 million in sales in the last seven days.

A Sotheby’s auction earlier this year saw a record $11.8 million paid for a CryptoPunk NFT. The NFT was one of nine aliens out of the 10,000 Punks and was sold to Shalom Meckenzie, the largest shareholder of Draftkings Inc DKNG.

A Christie’s auction in May sold nine Punks for $17 million, the highest amount paid for Punks.

Vee launched his own NFT line earlier this year called VeeFriends, which includes physical rewards like a meet-up convention.

Vee has been bullish on several NFT projects but also thrown caution to the overall market given the large supply from numerous projects that could lose value over the next few years.

When it comes to CryptoPunks though, Vee remains bullish.

“Hasn’t even started … not worried about micro dips over next decade … the macro is clear,” Vee responded to a Twitter user.

Watch Benzinga’s Interview with Gary Vee, which featured a discussion on NFTs here.
 

Photo: Vaynermedia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.