"Crypto Punks" is an NFT work of 10,000 punk characters released by Lava Labs in 2017. 10,000 were distributed free of charge and could be received by anyone with an Ethereum (ETH) wallet at the time. The 10,000 punks represented by 24x24 pixels do not have the same face, they are all managed on the Ethereum blockchain, and now there is an owner for each punk.

Of the 10,000 punks, there are rare characters such as 9 aliens, 24 Ape, and 88 zombies, all of which can be found on the official page. Rare punks are trading at surprisingly high prices, with a record high of 4,200 ETH (820 million yen at the time = about 1.3 billion yen at the current rate) and only 9 aliens. It was one of. The other day, Christie's also made a successful bid for 1.7 billion yen with a set of 9 bodies (1 of which is an alien). After all it seems that aliens and apes are high.

What's interesting is the official website of LavaLrabs, which is currently owned by the owner.Punks for saleWhere you can check at any time. At the moment, the lowest price seems to be around 4.5 million yen. If you browse the site with a wallet such as Metamask installed in your browser, a purchase button will appear and you can purchase at any time with Ethereum payment. It is also possible to offer a limit price (offer the desired price) to punks that are not sold.Each punks pageIf you look at, it is natural because it is an NFT, but you can check it at any time because the history of the owner and the price at that time are all recorded on the blockchain.

For example, there are 259 punks wearing hoodies.

Zombies are rare characters with only 88 bodies.

Of course, at this stage, many people are still speculatively purchasing (this is the same situation for all NFTs), but for example, in July 2017, I bought an alien punk (Punk # 2890) for 10,000 dollars. Investors sold for $ 760,000 in 2020. In fact, the return is 75 times in 3 years. From the old values, it seems like "Is this something to invest in?", But this is exactly what it is today. In fact, many punks trade for over $ 100,000. For example, even if there is a negative opinion about cryptocurrencies, the river that has flowed out can no longer be stopped. After all, NFT will go as far as it goes.

Of course, even if you buy such an NFT, it doesn't mean that you can decorate it in your room, and most people at the moment may feel how to enjoy it. However, if you still own traditional art and keep it in the warehouse, it's exactly the same story, and in the future, when it becomes commonplace to buy something like this, the sense of incongruity may disappear. In that sense, there is no deterioration in condition like watches and traditional works of art, there is no fear of being stolen (although the possibility of hacking is not zero), and transfer of ownership on the blockchain is safe. It may be said that it is a new form of assets in the cryptocurrency (= Crypto) era.

Rather, whether or not NFTs can truly become top-notch art is, after all, whether or not the owner can obtain ownership value and satisfaction other than in the asset sense. .. Real art, which has survived a long history, has that, but I think it will depend on the future whether NFTs can build it.

A title like "the oldest NFT in the world" like Cryptopunks will ensure a certain level of satisfaction for the purchaser. However, for other NFT arts that do not have such a title, I think the final question is whether the person who bought it will be satisfied for a long time.