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3. They were inspired by the London punk scene
To Hall and Watkinson, there was a raucous, anti-establishment spirit to the early days of the blockchain movement. It was a vibe they wanted to reflect in the look of their Punks.
‘The London punk movement of the 1970s felt like the right aesthetic.’ The dystopian grit of cyberpunk as typified by the film Blade Runner and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, was also an influence.
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9. The CryptoPunks market is extremely active
As of early April 2021, over 8,000 sales had been recorded in the previous 12 months, with an average sale price of 15.45 ether ($30,412.40). The total value of all sales is 127,360 ether ($251,620,000) — and that value grows daily.
In February,
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6. Some CryptoPunks are rarer than others
As well as the human CryptoPunks, Hall and Watkinson — with a nod to popular culture archetypes — tweaked their software algorithms to generate a scarcer number of fantastical, non-human works, adding 88 green-skinned zombie Punks, 24 hirsute ape Punks and nine light-blue-skinned alien Punks to t...
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8. CryptoPunks inspired a community of collectors and connoisseurs
Once minted, Hall and Watkinson offered the CryptoPunks for free, not forgetting to claim 1,000 for themselves, 'just in case it becomes a thing,' as Hall put it.
At fi...
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1. CryptoPunks began as an experiment
In 2017, Matt Hall and John Watkinson, founders of New York-based software company Larva Labs, created a software program that would generate thousands of different, strange-looking characters.
At first, they thought they might have had the makings of a
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2. Larva Labs launched CryptoPunks on June 23, 2017
The CryptoPunks are a collection of 24x24, 8-bit-style pixel art images of misfits and eccentrics.
There are exactly 10,000 of them, each with their own ostensible personality and unique combination of distinctive, randomly generated features.
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7. The collection of 10,000 Cryptopunks is definitive and unalterable
In accordance with the nature of blockchain, once the project went live, Larva Labs couldn’t alter the existing series, even if they wanted to. ‘It’s odd to think of what might have been different if we had run the generator just one more time, or used the penultimate run’s output.’
The cr...
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What Are CryptoPunks?
CryptoPunks are collectible pieces of crypto art, represented by NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The CryptoPunks are a collection of 24x24, 8-bit-style pixel art images of misfits and eccentrics. There are exactly 10,000 of them...
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4. Anyone and everyone can view any one of the CryptoPunks
There’s a composite image of all 10,000 CryptoPunks on Larva Labs’ website.
- Anyone can save a copy of the image file to their memory stick or hard drive.
- Each Punk also has it...
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10. Now, Hall and Watkinson themselves are putting up a set of their own CryptoPunks for traditional auction
Larva Labs’ set comprises nine CryptoPunks, all from their original collection, in a single lot that highlights the series’ best features: muttonchops, earrings, big s...
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5. But only one person can officially own a CryptoPunk
Official ownership of each work is publicly accessible on the Ethereum blockchain. The ownership history of each artwork is tracked and documented in the blockchain.
- The record, as Larva Labs explained to Christie’s, ‘is incorruptible and promises to be extraordinarily long-lived.
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